Blacks in White Author Series: Pregnant While Black: Advancing Justice for Maternal Health in America with Dr. Monique Rainford moderated by Dr. Kaye Wise Whitehead
Thursday, October 12th, 2023 | 6:30pm – 8pm
This event is free and open to the public. 

Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy than their white peers. Dr. Monique Rainford is working to better understand these disparities and do something about them. Pregnant While Black is a hopeful exploration of the issues pregnant Black women face in America. Within these pages, Dr. Rainford draws on over twenty years of experience working in obstetrics and gynecology to offer a primer on Black pregnancies and how to better care for them. She shares the successes and testimonies of Black women who have struggled during pregnancy and childbirth, anchoring the stories of these women with carefully researched facts.

Join the Reginald F. Lewis Museum for this overdue conversation on Black maternal health with Dr. Monique Rainford.  Questions from the audience  will be taken during a Q & A followed with an author book signing. This book conversation will be moderated by WEAA  Radio Show Host, Dr. Kaye Whitehead. This program is in conjunction with Blacks in White: African American Health Professionals.

About the Participant:

Monique Rainford, MD, is a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist with over twenty years’ experience. An award-winning graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Medical School, she is currently an assistant professor at Yale Medicine. Her writing about maternal and other health disparities experienced by Black women has been featured in multiple publications, including Afro, Elephant Journal, and the Hartford Courant, and her broader work related to women’s health and wellness has been featured in the South Florida Times, the Baltimore Sun, Thought Catalog, and the Journal of Reproductive Medicine. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children.

Kaye  Wise Whitehead, Ph.D., professor of communication and African and African American Studies, is a three-time New York Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker and the award-winning radio host of Today with Dr. Kaye on WEAA 88.9FM. She is also the founder and executive director of the Karson Institute for Race, Peace, and Social Justice, and the founding executive director of the Emilie Frances Davis Center for Education, Research, and Culture. Her scholarship examines the ways race, class, and gender coalesce in American classrooms as well as in political and social environments.