The MCNY Black Maternity Health Initiative (BMHI) is a student and community engagement project that seeks to respond to the existential crisis of Black maternal health in the U.S., New York City, and most specifically, the Bronx.
The initiative grew out of a roundtable conversation the MCNY Library hosted in December 2021 on the many social determinants that shape the drastic health inequity in maternal health in our communities. In April 2022, the library secured the Libraries Transform Communities Engagement Grant from the American Library Association to support the call to action on Black maternal health that students, alumni, faculty, and staff forcefully articulated in December.
Key to the initiative are the library’s partnerships with Bronx-based community groups working in the field of Black maternal health. This collaboration fosters a rich exchange that will support MCNY students and alumni in taking on leadership civic engagement roles in the broader MCNY community.
The Peer Leadership group is at the heart of the MCNY Black Maternal Initiative. Recruited from among MCNY students and alumni through an application process, Peer Leaders will have the opportunity to meet and work with the project’s community partners as well as with other leaders in public health, medicine, political advocacy, activism. They will do research and discuss the issues among themselves, drawing from an array of different life and work experiences and leveraging the knowledge and practices of their own different academic disciplines.
The Peer Leadership Group is tasked with engaging the MCNY community in deep conversation and advocacy around this longstanding crisis. This will include, among other things, designing select library programming over the next two semesters.
Meet Our Community Partners
Meet the Peer Leadership Group
The Peer Leadership Group is comprised of fourteen undergraduates, graduates, and alumni from across a range of MCNY programs including Public Administration, Emergency and Disaster Management, Community Health Education, Human Services, Business Administration in Healthcare Management, Business Administration in Health Services & Risk Management, Education, Project Management, and CASAC. As such, the Peer Leadership Group benefits from a multidisciplinary perspective as well as from the unique life and career experiences of each of its members.