Three local health centers – DotHouse Health, Codman Square Health Center, and Mattapan Community Health Center – will launch a new training program for doulas this year through the state’s Department of Public Health. The objective is to improve the health of pregnant and postpartum individuals, caregivers, and families by making doulas more accessible in communities like Dorchester and Mattapan.

Though non-medical professionals, doulas provide informational, emotional, and physical support before, during, and after pregnancy.

“We decided to apply as a collaboration between the three health centers because we serve similar patient populations,” said Dr. Anuka Das, family medicine/obstetrics physician and Dot House Health’s Women’s Health Team Lead. “A lot of our patients at all three of these health centers are first or second-generation into their life in the US or newly arriving in their pregnancies. There can be an increased need for advocacy for those patients navigating the health care system.”

“Some patients don’t have anyone that can come with them for various reasons to the labor room,” Das, 34, said in an interview with The Reporter. “Being in a hospital setting can be very overwhelming for people, especially as medical teams change with every shift. An advocate who understands the health care setting but is not a health care provider is the role of the doula.”

Doulas also provide support for other pregnancy-related needs such as miscarriages and abortions.

While anyone can engage a private doula, many cannot afford them. About a year ago, MassHealth, the insurer for most patients at the three centers, began covering doula services provided by individual doulas practicing independently and in group practices.

“Our hope is this program is a way for those patients who have MassHealth who maybe could not afford a doula or didn’t know how to connect before, who are largely non-English speaking, can connect with doulas that their insurance will cover,” said Das, a Dorchester resident.

One object of the health center-based program is to build a workforce of doulas and create job opportunities locally.

“Our goal is to recruit folks from the community for this program who speak languages that our patients speak and who have lived experiences as our patients do,” Das said. “We are funding their training and also opening opportunities for them.”

Recruiting materials for those interested in joining the workforce will be available early this month and an information session will be held at the end of the month. The first cohort of doulas will begin its six months of training in March, with a second cohort next year. Doulas of the Diaspora, a pregnancy care center in Boston founded by Deu Almeida, will lead the effort, and all doulas will be trained as community health workers and certified lactation counselors.

Training will cover topics such as the history of childbirth and midwifery, the emotional and psychological processes of birth, and laboring and pushing positions.

“At the end of six months, they become independently licensed,” said Das. “They can either become individual doulas or join a practice. They can see whoever they choose to, but we would have a memorandum of understanding that they would at least see a certain number of DotHouse, Mattapan, and Codman patients in the first year of practice.”

She added: “As far as we know we do not know of another program where it’s a collaboration at the community level to create a doulas workforce. Creating almost a playbook at the end of how we did it so people can replicate that so everyone in the state of Massachusetts who would like a doula can have one.”