Boston Area Resources
Birth Sisters at Boston Medical Center (BMC)
The Birth Sisters Program is an innovative multi-cultural doula service that offers women "sister-like" support during pregnancy, childbirth, and the post-partum period.
Trained to give social support to at-risk mothers in their community and connect them to needed resources, Birth Sisters offer prenatal home visits, labor support, and help at home after the baby comes. By "mothering the mother", they play an important role in empowering women, their children, and their communities.
Boston Healthy Start Initiative
The Boston Healthy Start Initiative has been part of a national initiative to reduce racial inequities in infant mortality and poor birth outcomes for the past 25 years. BHSI provides direct support to pregnant and parenting women, children and families through care coordination, connection to resources, health education, and advocacy. Read below to learn more about BHSI services.
BHSI also coordinates the Community Action Network (CAN), which is a community coalition that focuses on reducing the inequities in infant mortality and poor birth outcomes through policy strategies. More information on CAN is located at the bottom of this page.
Vital Village
Vital Village is a network of residents and organizations committed to maximizing child, family, and community well-being. Our place-based, community engagement network mobilizes collective investment from residents, community organizations and institutions to seed scalable and sustainable community change around child protection and promoting healthy social and emotional development in early childhood.
The Vital Village Network is using a collective impact approach to supporting deeper collaboration among educators, clinicians, social service providers, legal advocates and residents to strengthen prenatal, early childhood education, and economic security and preventive legal resources that support family and community protective factors. We have developed hubs of innovation within and a formal collaborative network across three Boston Neighborhoods: Dudley (Roxbury/North Dorchester), Mattapan, and Codman Square (Dorchester).
Free Breastfeeding Support Groups
http://bostonbreastfeeding.weebly.com/greater-boston-calendar.html
https://www.vitalvillage.org/projects/breastfeeding-coalition/find-a-group
The Resilient Sisterhood Project
The Resilient Sisterhood Project’s mission is to educate and empower women of African descent regarding common but rarely discussed diseases of the reproductive system that disproportionately affect them. We approach these diseases and associated issues through a cultural and social justice lens, because we believe that poor knowledge of reproductive health is primarily related to health, racial, and socioeconomic disparities.
Perinatal Mental Health Alliance for People of Color (PMHA)
Three perinatal professionals came together to create an organization for women of color run by women of color to provide support, advocacy, information, and resources around perinatal mental health. We saw a need for a resource built and held by communities of color, and we created the PMHA-WOC to support women, families, and professionals.
Our becoming a part of PSI embodies our shared commitments to collaboration, advocacy, and building stronger support systems for both families and professionals. Our mission and vision to support professionals and families of color around perinatal mood and anxiety disorders align with PSI's vision that all families will have access to the information, support, and care that they need around these complications.
Doulas, midwives, lactation consultants
Kira Kim, IBCLC, CLE North Shore Birth Services, Postpartum Home Visits
Kira Kim is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) in private practice serving families all over the North Shore of Massachusetts.
617-319-4542
Kira@northshorebirthservices.com
http://www.northshorebirthservices.com
Kira is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant who works primarily in private practice doing home visits. Marrying her love of birth and breastfeeding, she focuses heavily on the impacts of birth on the early weeks of breastfeeding. She is on the Board of Directors for the Massachusetts Midwives Alliance and Massachusetts Lactation Consultant Association.
She is passionately devoted to increasing the number of lactation professionals of color so that families can access skilled clinical care by practitioners who have similar cultural beliefs and life experiences. Lactation work is an intimate and personal field and counseling and personal connection are, in Kira’s opinion, as highly important as clinical skills.
She lives in the North Shore with her 4 kids, her husband and an old lazy cat. She studies herbalism and believes food is medicine, including nature’s very first food.
Maria Dolorico, M. Ed., BCC, CLC
399 Boylston Street
Suite 900
Boston, MA 02116
617-869-4310
Perinatal mental health specialist
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Therapists, Psychologists, Psychiatrists, social workers, counselors
Vierglyn Chery-Reed LMHC, ET Ethnicity/Race: Haitian & Hispanic Native Heritage
Clinical Mental Health Counseling , Expressive Arts Therapist
Speaks: English, Mild Spanish, moderate Haitian-Creole proficiency
Grounding Hearts, Inc.
112 Water Street, Office Suite 203
Practice Suite 202
Boston, MA 02109
857-600-2449
Trauma-informed practice, cross-cultural, QPOC, anxiety, depression, mood disorder, holistic/spiritual. psycho-spiritual.
Individuals, couples and families-children, adolescents, adults, older adults
Experienced working with LGBTQ PoC
Insurances accepted: BC/BS, Tufts, Aetna, Cigna
Sliding scale/Flexible fee system available
Sidney Trantham, PhD Ethnicity/Race: African-American, Multiracial, multiethnic
Clinical Psychologist
Neuropsychologist
Speaks:English
Sidney Trantham
Counseling and Assessments
233 Harvard Street, Office #303
Boston, MA 02446
617-785-0409
Anxiety, depression, identity-development (race, gender, sexuality); psychological, gender and neuropsychological assessment.
Individuals, CBT, Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), interpersonal, psychodynamic.
School-age children, adolescents/young adults, adults , transgender children & adolescents, LGBTQ adults, PoC
Insurances accepted: None
*Coolidge Corner, Brookline, C train on the Green line.
Keyona Aviles, LMHC Ethnicity/Race: Black (African-American) & West Indian
Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Speaks:English
Inspired Release
32 Hartford Street-B
Dorchester, MA 02125
617-446-3840
Healing/Recovery:trauma, addiction (substance or otherwise), sexual abuse, grief, loss, relationships.
Holistic, Humanistic, Movement Based, Adventure Based, Dance, Yoga, Mindfulness, TIMBo
Insurances accepted:None, but sliding scale and flexible fee available.
Experienced working with LGBTQ PoC
Marshaun Glover, PhD Ethnicity/Race: African American
Dr. Marshaun Glover, LLC
Clinical Psychologist
Speaks:English
112 Water Street, Suite 203
Boston, MA 02109
617-684-5712
Trauma, depression, anxiety.
Individuals, couples, Family CBT
Adults, children, adolescents
Experienced working with LGBTQ PoC, over 40% of his practice meets this criteria
Insurances accepted: Blue Cross, out of network
Asha Ragin, MAT, PhD Ethnicity/Race: African American
Associate Director of Clinical Services
Speaks:English
206 Clarendon Street
Boston, MA 02116
617-849-9809 ext.354
Anger Management, codependency, cultural/ethnic acculturation issues, peer relationships, relationship issues, spirituality, substance abuse, trauma and PTSD.
Art Therapy, CBT, DBT, Expressive Arts, Integrative, Interpersonal,Mindfulness-based, motivational interviewing, multi-cultural therapy, narrative, psychodynamic
Populations Asha specializes in: African American and other racial and ethnic background, individuals and groups, adolescents (14-19), adults, elders (55+)
Insurances accepted: BMC Health Net, Beacon, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Neighborhood Health Plan, Tufts, Out of Network
Sliding scale/flexible fee available
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