SACKRED BIRTH
SACKRED Birth
Mobilizing A New Quality Paradigm in Obstetric Care
In her ongoing mission to transform maternal health care, Dr. Karen Antoinette Scott has been a leading voice in championing equity, safety, and dignity for Black and Indigenous birthing people. Her work bridges research, advocacy, and system redesign to confront obstetric racism and reimagine what quality care truly means.
Dr. Scott recently published SACKRED Birth Mobilizing a New Quality Paradigm in Obstetric Care —a groundbreaking book that introduces the SACKRED Birth framework and calls for a radical shift in how we define and deliver safe, accountable, and culturally responsive care in obstetrics.
Book Description: Hospitals, health plans, and quality organizations generally define safety as the absence of a preventable harm and subsequently interpret decreasing trends in adverse physical outcomes as indicators of reducing harm and improving quality. Karen Antoinette Scott situates the contemporary provision of obstetric care and evaluation of obstetric quality in a broader historical context to illuminate a culture of neutral apathy and detached concern towards the lives of Black women, men, and children, dating back to antebellum era ideologies and practices of anti-Black racism and anti-Black misogyny. Scott challenges conventional obstetric quality ethics, leadership, theories, measures, and methodologies that primarily focus on adverse outcomes, effectively excluding patient experiences and community wisdom. SACKRED Birth argues the need for a more culturally and scientifically responsive, relevant, and rigorous obstetric quality paradigm defined, valued, and shaped for, by, and with Black mothers and birthing people. Using community-based focus groups and consensus dialogue, Scott establishes new obstetric quality norms and methodologies to guide scholars, professionals, and advocates in understanding, investigating, and interpreting clinical practice, decision-making, and care delivery during childbirth in a manner that affirms the humanity, power, and potential, not pathology, of Blackness, Black reproducing bodies, and Black births in hospital settings.
Click here get your copy of SACKRED Birth using the discount code: GLR BD8 to receive 20% off!
Me, You, & SACKRED Birth Book Reading + Q&A Series
We are excited to host an 8-part book reading series for SACKRED Birth: Mobilizing a New Quality Paradigm in Obstetric Care, entitled Me, You & SACKRED Birth.
Special thanks to The Educated Birth for generously sponsoring this powerful series.
Me, You & SACKRED Birth is more than a book discussion—it’s a communal space to engage directly with Dr. Karen Antoinette Scott in conversations about obstetric racism, hospital-based obstetric care, and the ongoing fight for humane, just, and equitable care.
Whether you are a health professional, birth worker, advocate, scholar, or someone deeply invested in birth justice, this series will challenge your assumptions, deepen your understanding, and ignite your commitment to transformative change in maternal health.If you missed the last sessions from the Me, You, & SACKRED Birth, head over to our YouTube Channel to watch the replays.
Click here to register for the upcoming sessions!
