Age : 47
Company Name : Birthing Cultural Rigor, LLC
Position In The Company : Chief Black Feminist Physician Scientist, Founding CEO, Owner
Bio: Dr. Karen A. Scott, MD, MPH, FACOG (she/her), is the Chief Black Feminist Physician Scientist, Founding CEO, and Owner of Birthing Cultural Rigor, LLC, with more than 25 years of advocating for the dignity and sanctity of Black women and girls. She is an improvement and implementation scientist, activist, teacher, and mentor grounded in a Black feminist-reproductive justice praxis with formal training and experience as community-based OBGYN physician and applied epidemiologist. Dr. Scott’s ethical, theoretical, and methodological approaches interrogate health services design, provision, evaluation, and training in antepartum, intrapartum, and postpartum units as sites through which obstetric racism is enacted against the humanity, bodies, and lives of Black women, girls, and gender expansive people, in the afterlife of slavery and passage of the Congressional Act of 1807 (which took effect in 1808, prohibiting further participation of the United States in the slave trade.).
During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Dr. Scott launched a national study called SACRED Birth to validate a novel survey instrument designed by Dr. Scott that examines Safety, Autonomy, Communication, Racism, Empathy, and Dignity during childbirth hospitalization. SACRED Birth affirmed and amplified the voices and lived experiences of more than 1100 Black women and people across 348 hospitals and 34 states, including D.C., as patient, community, and content experts. To date, the Patient Reported Experience Measure of OBstetric racism©, also known as the PREM-OB Scale™ Suite, remains one of the most culturally and scientifically rigorous and relevant perinatal PREMs that operationalizes reproductive justice, research justice, and Black feminism in hospital-based quality improvement and implementation initiatives. From 2021 to 2022, Dr Scott developed and implemented the first two capacity development programs across San Francisco County and the city of Boston that involve the implementation, spread, and scale of the PREM-OB™ Scale Suite as well as other novel tools, trainings, and techniques designed by Dr Scott.
At the end of 2021, Dr. Scott relocated to her birthplace in Nashville, TN focus her activism and scholarship throughout the South and Midwest. In 2022, Black Mamas Matter Alliance hosted the Black Maternal Health Conference and Training Institute and recognized Dr Scott as an unsung hero in public health related to infant and maternal mortality prevention by selecting her to receive the Inaugural Jackson, Rowley, and Hogan Excellence in Black Maternal Health Scholarship, in honor of the foremothers of Black Maternal Health scholarship and practice. Currently, she is the proud developer and principal investigator of the first and only Black community-led multi-state quality and safety program to address obstetric racism during childbirth hospitalization and postpartum called The CATCH Pilot, Community-led Accountability and Transformation in Care experiences and Hospital culture. She also serves on the TN Fetal Infant Mortality Review Committee and TN Maternal Mortality Review Committee Taskforce.
Website URL: https://www.birthingculturalrigor.com/
Social Media URL
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/rjepiobwarrior/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RJEpiOBWarrior
