B4 - Centering Reproductive, Restorative, and Racial Justice in Foundational Relationships: The Role of Doulas in Advancing Early Relational Health

Early Relational Health (ERH), the emotional connection from strong and nurturing relationships, is crucial to young children’s growth and development. Community-based doulas (CBD) provide early linkage to health care and parenting education while encouraging parental attachment.  During this session, presenters will share HealthConnect One and the Center for the Study of Social Policy's journey to uncovering the intersection between early relational health and the work of community-based doulas through a doula-centered process, our bi-directional learning approach to co-developing an ERH doula curriculum and share early results from the first cohort of doulas trained with the curriculum. Implications on practice and policy for CBDs and other perinatal support workers will be discussed.