Monique Rodriguez Donates $2M to Support Black Maternal Health

Monique Rodriguez, founder of Mielle Organics, has announced a multi-year $2 million donation to birthFUND, a nonprofit working to improve maternal health outcomes for expectant mothers across the U.S.

Founded by journalist Elaine Welteroth in 2024, birthFUND provides direct financial grants to pregnant families to help cover midwifery care, holistic perinatal support, and essential postpartum resources.

Now, birthFUND is expanding its work by investing in the healthcare professionals who help make safer births possible. Rodriguez’s donation will establish the birthFUND Milan Rodriguez Midwifery Scholarship Program, supporting the next generation of midwives on Chicago’s South Side.

ck Maternal Health Crisis

The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries. It is reported that pregnancy-related mortality in the U.S. is between 4 and 10 times higher than in other high-income countries like Japan, Australia, and Austria. For Black women, that risk is the highest. They are dying at three times the rate of white women during and after childbirth. Experts believe that 80% of these deaths are preventable. But economic, legal, and infrastructural disparities block women from accessing the care that they require. 

One-third of U.S. counties are classified as maternity care deserts. These are areas without a birthing hospital, birth center, or obstetrician. Roughly 2.4 million women of reproductive age live in these areas and risk giving birth without the proper support. 

Even when pregnant mothers have access to birth workers during labor, postpartum care is critical. In fact, 65% of pregnancy-related deaths occur during the postpartum period. Mothers suffer from complications such as severe bleeding, high blood pressure, infection, and cardiomyopathy, which can ultimately lead to death. The U.S. maternity healthcare system does not guarantee universal postpartum home visits or mandated paid parental leave. Both are essential for mothers’ well-being and recovery. 

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The Importance of Midwives 

The World Health Organization champions midwives as the key to limiting maternal mortality. While obstetricians are trained as medical doctors and surgeons, midwives specialize in natural, low-risk, holistic births. Midwives have advanced training in physiological labor and supportive care. A recent study found that if midwives were properly integrated into the healthcare system, they could provide 80% of essential maternal care. They could potentially avert 41% of maternal deaths, 39% of neonatal deaths, and 26% of stillbirths. Even more, midwifery-led care reduces obstetric interventions by 13%. 

Yet the U.S. health system does not systematically incorporate midwives into maternity care services. Compared to other developed countries, the U.S. and Canada have the lowest supplies of midwives, obstetricians, and gynaecologists. Only roughly 12% of births in recent years were attended by midwives. 

Another barrier to receiving care is financial. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandates Medicaid programs to cover midwifery care. However, Medicaid’s low reimbursement rates affect beneficiaries’ ability to access these services. Black women and women of color are the demographics that are most likely to face cost-related barriers to receiving care. 

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birthFUND

Rather than waiting for insurance companies and lawmakers to make a change, Welteroth founded birthFUND to support pregnant families. After her own life-changing home birth experience with a midwife, she committed herself to raising awareness about the urgent need for midwives during pregnancy and labor. In 2023, she launched a single fundraising campaign for her birthday; to her surprise, she raised $16,000 in just 16 hours. This allowed her to provide a full suite of birth services for two families in her community. “Overnight, requests for birth support came in from across the country,” Welteroth shares on her website. 

She tapped into her network of family and friends and built a coalition of mothers, families, and corporate sponsors to fund holistic birth support for expectant families. Their founding members include Serena Williams, Kelly Rowland, Chrissy Teigen, and Abby Phillip, among others. So far, birthFUND has raised more than $6 million. 

With that money, the birthFUND team provides financial grants and resources to help pregnant families access holistic perinatal care and midwifery services. They invest in community birth centers and provide capital for essential postpartum needs, lactation support, and rapid response assistance for families in crisis. birthFUND also works to raise awareness about the importance of inclusive, midwife-supported maternal care. 

With this recent investment from Rodriguez, they are expanding their reach even further. 

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Investing in Infrastructure 

Before founding Mielle Organics, Rodriguez worked as a labor and delivery nurse on Chicago’s South Side. In 2013, she experienced a traumatic childbirth, and her son, Milan, tragically died at six months. “I was a labor and delivery nurse. I knew what was happening in my body, and I still could not get anyone in that hospital to act on behalf of me or my baby,” Rodriguez said when announcing her partnership with birthFUND. “That is not bad luck. That is a system failure.” 

After watching the work birthFUND did, Rodriguez was inspired to get involved and make her own contribution. Her investment will create the birthFUND Milan Rodriguez Midwifery Scholarship Program at Kennedy-King College in Chicago. Established in partnership with the Black Midwifery Collective, headed by Star August-Ali, the multi-year program will fund each cohort of student midwives. 

This scholarship marks a turning point in birthFUND’s programming. Now, instead of only providing care for mothers and babies, they are going even further up the pipeline. Rodriguez and Welteroth are investing in the healthcare workers who have been proven to dramatically improve outcomes for Black mothers and children. 

Main image: Black expectant mother in clinic. Source: Canva