April 11 to 17 is Black Maternal Health Week a time set aside to build awareness, deepen advocacy, and honour the voices and lived experiences of Black mothers and birthing people.
In Canada, it is also a time to be honest about what our healthcare system is still getting wrong.
What a 2023 Canadian Study Found
A qualitative study published in Women’s Health examined the maternity care experiences of Black women in the Greater Toronto Area. Through in-depth interviews with 24 women who were pregnant or had recently given birth, researchers explored how obstetric racism shaped not just what these women experienced but how they perceived the quality of the care they received.
What emerged was deeply troubling.
Women described feeling invisible and unheard. They spoke about being ignored or neglected when raising concerns, being objectified and devalued as patients, and treated without basic dignity or respect.
Many described a pervasive sense of paternalism, leading to a loss of agency over decisions about their own bodies and care. They felt managed rather than listened to. Processed rather than seen.
These were not one-off frustrations. These were consistent, recognizable patterns that fundamentally damaged trust between patients and providers.
The study connects these experiences directly to poorer quality of care and deteriorating therapeutic relationships. It also draws on broader evidence linking disrespect and mistreatment in perinatal settings to perinatal mood disorders and psychosocial distress. The harm, in other words, does not end when a woman leaves the hospital. It follows her into her recovery, her mental health, her experience of early parenthood.
A Gap Canada Can No Longer Afford
One of the study’s most pointed observations is about data. Compared to countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, Canada has limited race-based maternal health data. That absence matters enormously. When a system does not measure a disparity, it becomes very easy to treat that disparity as unproven, contested, or less urgent than it actually is.
The women in this study have already done the work of making their experiences visible. They have already told us what is happening. The data gap does not reflect a lack of information it reflects a lack of institutional will to formalize, track, and be accountable for it.
What Black Women Are Calling For
The participants in this study did not only describe the problem. They named exactly what needs to change:
Anti-Black racism training specific to perinatal care, not broad diversity programming, but targeted education that prepares providers to recognize and interrupt bias in maternity and birthing settings, where the stakes are at their highest.
Greater representation of Black healthcare providers in perinatal and maternity settings — so that Black women can access care from providers who are more likely to see them fully, believe them, and advocate for them.
Stronger investment in Black maternal health research to build the evidence base that should be informing policy, clinical practice, and systemic intervention across Canada.
These are not radical demands. They are reasonable, specific, and long overdue.
More Than a Week
Black Maternal Health Week is not a symbolic gesture. It is a reminder that the issue exists 52 weeks a year, and that the urgency does not diminish when the week ends.
Black women in Canada have been clear about what they have experienced and what they need. The responsibility now falls on healthcare institutions, policymakers, researchers, and all of us who care about equity to respond not with statements, but with sustained and structural action.
Black maternal health deserves attention. It deserves resources. It deserves change.
Study referenced: Obstetric racism and perceived quality of maternity care in Canada: Voices of Black women, Priscilla N. Boakye et al., Women’s Health, 2023.
Read the full study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10542226/
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