Star-August Ali said her journey towards midwifery was born out of a traumatic experience giving birth to her first child 16 years ago.
"I just remember waking up from a drug-induced coma to find my son being resuscitated on the table next to me, something that completely could have been prevented," she said. "Unfortunately, this happens to be the story of a lot of women of color, specifically Black women in the United States."
In Illinois, Black women are three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related medical conditions than white women, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health, and 91% of pregnancy-related deaths were potentially preventable.
Ali said much of this is due to the obstetric desert that exists in Illinois, specifically in communities of color. In the U.S., only about 7% of
all contemporary midwives are Black. Ali herself is one of just a handful of Black Certified Professional Midwives (CPM) in the state of Illinois.
"I was like, I need to get a workforce and midwives up as quickly as possible to be able to offer families autonomy, cultural congruency of care options, bodily autonomy and to really offer options outside of this industrialized, technocratic, so-called healthcare system here in the Western world," Ali said.
That's how the Black Midwifery Collective was formed. The nonprofit, based on Chicago's South Side, is dedicated to "transforming maternal health outcomes" for Black women while "reviving ancestral Black midwifery traditions that have sustained families for generations."
"Before there were hospitals, there were midwives. After hospitals, there will still be midwives," Ali said. "Right now, there is a huge national call for the investment within midwives on national level, in addition to families wanting community-based midwives, specifically women of color, who are the number one demanders of community-based births."
Ali said midwives, who are trained health care professionals, are able to provide culturally congruent care that is often lacking in hospitals one of the main reasons many Black women often fear walking into hospitals.
"'I feel like, if I go into a hospital, I'm not going to make out alive. I'm going to die.' These are thoughts that are common within the Black community, specifically amongst Black women because it's our reality," Ali said.
One out of 3 women of color who gave birth in an institutional setting reported experiencing maternal mistreatment during labor or delivery. Ali said that's what the Black Midwifery Collective has been working to address.
The nonprofit has been working to increase the racial diversity of community midwives to combat obstetric racism, through strategies like the Certified Professional Midwife degree program in Illinois, recently developed in partnership with Kennedy-King College.
The program, where students will work with midwives on the South Side, sets up a pipeline to get midwives on the ground working with the communities that need them the most. It will also be the first direct entry midwifery school in Illinois and will begin enrolling students in the Fall of 2026.
"I would like to see a midwife in every neighbored, in every community, not only in the state of Illinois, not only United States, but around the world," Ali said. "Every woman should be able to find a culturally congruent provider within her community who understands her culture to be able to offer her maternity care. I feel like it's a human right."