Our Interview with Accompany Board President Ketura'h Edwards-Robinson

“If the evidence shows how important doula support is, then why are we not backing this working population? Why are we not supporting them to be successful? That’s another thing that I love to be a part of championing with Accompany Doula Care.”

We recently sat down with Ketura’h Edwards-Robinson, MSN, SANE-MA, WHNP-BC, AGNP-C, to learn more about her work as a women’s health nurse practitioner, her vision for the future of maternal health in Massachusetts, and more.

Ketura’h is the newly-elected president of the Accompany Doula Care Board. She possesses over ten years of advanced practice nursing experience working in the Boston area specializing in Women’s Health, Acute/Primary Care, and Substance Use/Misuse. In addition, she works as a specially trained Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) responding to trauma emergencies at several hospitals within the Greater Boston area. Learn more about Ketura’h below!

Can you please tell us about your background and work experience?

For a little bit over 10 years now, I’ve worked as a nurse practitioner. I’m dual-certified in women’s health, as well as adult gerontology primary care. But, my passion and love is doing work in women’s health. I’ve worked at a Community Health Center in Roxbury, since the start of my nursing career in 2012. I went from a nurse to a care manager, and now for the past nine years, I’ve worked as a women’s health nurse practitioner, primarily in the OB-GYN department. 

I have a background in correctional health, substance use, and substance use disorder care. I also work as a sexual assault nurse examiner for the state of Massachusetts, where I collect forensic evidence and provide trauma-informed care to people who unfortunately have experienced some form of sexual assault. 

What drew you to working in nursing, and more specifically, women’s health? 
I’ve always had an interest in health care. Like a lot of people, I went into college pre-med, got into that coursework, and got more exposure to, if I’m being honest, what that culture in medicine looks like. It didn’t align with my personality and how I wanted to interact as someone in health care. 

I started looking into other career pathways and discovered nursing. I knew that I didn’t want to do bedside nursing care. And, if I’m being honest, I went to an all-women’s college, and they make us badass women. So, I knew I wanted to be the one giving the orders. That’s how I discovered becoming a nurse practitioner. It was just a no brainer for me to do women’s health. It was actually the sexual assault nurse examiner job that I came across first, and I was like, “That looks like some Law and Order SVU, CSI type of stuff. That’s cool.” Then, I read the job description, and you had to have three years of work experience before you could take that job. 

That led me down the path of women’s health, the fact that I love being a woman. I think that our issues and our concerns are overlooked, under-researched, and sometimes just flat out ignored. I am a true advocate for women, for all disenfranchised people, but especially for women. 

What then drew you to train as a community birth doula?

I actually took a peer counselor breastfeeding course through the Boston Association for Childbirth Education and Nursing Mothers’ Council (BACE-NMC). That’s where I met Dianna Hahn. She was there doing the training as well, and several other very big people in the birth world. Outside of just how to offer more peer support for my patients around breastfeeding, the training really showed me that I am no way equipped, even as a health care provider, enough to support my patients with some of their after-birth concerns. 

So then, it just got me to be like, “Wow, what else do I not know?” Looking out for different education opportunities and resources in my area, I somehow crossed paths with Lorenza Holt, who is one of the founders of Accompany Doula Care. She told me about becoming a community birth doula. At that time, she was connected with BACE as well. I was like, “Sure!”

I took the training and loved it. Again, it got me really aware of just how large the deficit of my knowledge, even as an advanced-practice nurse, was with birth support and pregnancy support from the non-medical side of things. If there’s one thing I love about being a nurse, and why I also chose this pathway, is that in nursing, our care model is more of a biopsychosocial model, where we are not just concerned about the medical side of things. We need to care for the person as a whole. If they’re having social or mental health concerns, that’s going to be a barrier for their medical treatment, their medical care, and their overall health. So, we need to find a care plan that will address all of those things. I felt that the doula training, and just their role, truly embodies so much of that aspect which is so aligned with nursing. 

How did you get involved with Accompany Doula Care and the Board?

From being trained as a community birth doula through BACE, with Lorenza, she was like, “Would you like to come and be an Accompany doula?” I was like, “Yes!” I did that for about two years. It did become a little bit challenging, trying to do doula work with how important it is that you are present for your patients. I also have a whole schedule of patients that I have to see. I was very fortunate, where I only maybe had one overlap with a clinical day for myself, with a birth, and I chose the birth. But I knew that wasn’t sustainable. I knew I eventually would be putting my full-time job in jeopardy in some way. 

So, I went to leadership within Accompany, and I said, “I hate to do this, but I have to step back from the doula work. It’s not sustainable for me. But I absolutely love the mission of Accompany and what your aims are, what your goal is, the advocacy work that you want to do, and the research component that you want to engage in. How can I still be involved?” 

Fortunately, I’m so lucky that Dianna was like, “Would you be interested in being on our Board?” I was like, “Oh that’s an adult thing. Tell me more about that!” It was absolutely the best decision I could have ever made. I’m so happy I was given the opportunity, and I’m not looking back. 

What is your perspective on how doula care is so critical to improving maternal health outcomes?

The makeup of our current medical system around birth and pregnancy is piecemeal. It’s not like back in the day, where your provider would get called to come in to help support you during your delivery and during your birth. Now, I jokingly say to my patients, “It’s like McDonald’s. Whoever’s working on the fries that night is who’s going to be catching your baby or supporting you during your birth.” That could be really scary. You have nine months where you form this bond with someone, and when they’re most vulnerable physically and mentally, due to all the changes in hormones and the changes in our bodies, to then not be present. 

I feel like the doula is that bridge. They’re different from your family. Sometimes, your family can be annoying or not supportive in the way that you need them to be. To bring in someone who’s just unapologetically there for you and has this knowledge and skill set to just be a servant to you during this time, like, who wouldn’t want that. 

Can you tell us a bit more about your work in trauma-informed care? What does that mean, and how is it important as both a nurse practitioner and a doula?

Why I love being a nurse, and why I love being a women’s health NP, is because one of the founding pillars of our field is that we’re providing trauma-informed care. That basically means, don’t do additional harm when you’re trying to provide care. If you look back in our history, and American history, if we’re going to be honest, even when we’ve been providing care to people, we’ve been causing harm, especially to people of color and people from different underserved backgrounds. 

The importance of that aim was definitely reinforced for me once I became a sexual assault nurse examiner. Again, pregnant people are a vulnerable population. But, can you imagine after experiencing a sexual assault, where your autonomy was completely disregarded. In fact, I can find a lot of connections and similarities between the mistreatment of a pregnant person during their birth and how they feel after experiencing that with how one would feel after a sexual assault. Like, you don’t trust anyone. Your trust was broken, even if it was from a stranger. Your space, your safety net, your body is supposed to be yours, and someone violated that. 

How do you bring someone out of that space of trauma, so that you can provide them care as well as let them know that they’re not alone, and that what happened to them was wrong and that it was not their fault. I will give credit to my training as a women’s health NP, but I would hands down have to give the majority of the credit to my training as a sexual assault nurse examiner. I bring that mindset of trauma-informed care with every role I do and when I engage with any patient, if I’m working in correctional health care and when I’m seeing just a regular GYN patient.

It can be simple, to simply asking, “Is there anything unique about how you like to have your pelvic exam done?” Or, letting someone know that you’re going to touch them before you touch them. It’s simple, and it should be more common sense than what it is, which is the unfortunate thing. 

What does advocacy mean to you?

It’s multi-layered for me. I think the low-hanging fruit answer is like, “speaking for someone when they can’t speak for themselves.” For me, it’s so much more than that. That’s definitely an important part of advocacy, but I think advocacy also involves empowering the person to speak for themselves. You can do that through education, or just simple encouragement. 

So, speaking for someone when they can’t speak for themselves, but also encouraging and empowering the person to speak on their own behalf. And then, policy change. Nothing changes, apparently in the United States, without some law or some higher being telling us that it needs to change. 
And, as well, being involved in research. That should be what is used to inform how we provide care and how we make decisions in our country. I actually just learned in an epidemiology class that of all the laws we have in our country, a very low percentage of our laws are based on actual evidence. That’s just crazy to me. So, my advocacy work is encouraging the person and speaking on their behalf when I need to speak on their behalf, but also being at the table when decisions are being made, when laws are being passed. When people that I care for, or that I represent in many cases as a doula and as a woman of color, just making sure that the right voices are there and are being listened to. 

What is your vision for the future of maternal health in Massachusetts?

I’m super excited about the traction and momentum that Massachusetts currently has with the different partners around the approval of birth centers and the increased, hopefully, payment and availability of nurse midwives. It’s just a different type of care. I need people to understand that we don’t mean that to be a slap to the medical model or doctors. No. We’re just like, “If we’ve got 17 different flavors of chips, why can’t we have two different ways that we want to get our pregnancy care?” 

In the future, what I hope is that a person can become pregnant, whenever they want, but also they can get the pregnancy care that they want and get the birth experience, or at least the birth environment of their choosing, and that money, health insurance, language, not be a barrier. I want barriers to be absolved. I want there to be no barriers to a pregnant person being able to get the care and support that they need during their pregnancy, during their birth, and during the postpartum period. 

The Maternal Health Omnibus Bill passed the Massachusetts Senate, which is really exciting.*

Yes, it’s all over my Instagram. But then, it doesn’t stop there. There are going to be more roadblocks. There are going to be more loopholes that someone’s going to ask us to jump through. I say “us” as all people who are advocating for the shared goal that there are no barriers to pregnant people being able to get the care that they want, the support that they want. 

*Editor’s Note: This interview took place on Wednesday, July 31, 2024.

Is there anything else you would like to share? 

I’m from Roxbury. I work in my community. That has always been really important to me. I have three children. I have a husband. I love shopping. I just really love being a part of Accompany. I really do, and I don’t even know if I have the full capacity in my vocab to pull together why. 

The work that Accompany is doing is so important. I really feel that we are at this very exciting point in Accompany’s life for doing more great things and working with more community partners to expand doula services, to extend doula services to many more people, and also just getting equitable payment for doulas. 

I had the privilege of, while I was working as a doula, where I had a full-time job, and I’m a provider. So, I have a provider full-time job. A missed birth, or patients not calling you, or clients not following up with you, I didn’t feel that financial burden the way I know some of my fellow doulas do, especially doulas of color. That just shouldn’t be the case. I don’t want to break the bank of the pregnant person, either, but you know, everyone needs to earn a cost of living. 

If the evidence shows how important doula support is, then why are we not backing this working population? Why are we not supporting them to be successful? That’s another thing that I love to be a part of championing with Accompany Doula Care.