New Kansas City documentary explores Black maternal mortality crisis

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A new documentary, filmed over the course of five years in the Kansas City area, aims to bring awareness to a national problem.

“The work she does is so important. That was just a story that I had to tell,” said Emmett Williams, the director of “Sister Doula.”

His documentary focuses on Hakima Payne, a Kansas City-based nurse, doula, and advocate who’s dedicated to improving maternity care and reproductive justice for Black families.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control showed that in 2021 the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 70 deaths per 100,000 live births. That’s nearly three times the rate for White women at 26.6 deaths and Hispanic women at 28 deaths. The increases from 2020 to 2021 for all race and Hispanic-origin groups were significant, according to the CDC report .

Hakima Payne previously worked as a labor and delivery nurse and experienced the problem firsthand.

“The problem is really multi-faceted, so there’s a lot of reasons those statistics are the way they are, but primarily we don’t do a good job of taking care of African American women. We don’t listen to them,” she said.

Payne currently trains thousands of doulas across the country through her Kansas City-based nonprofit Uzazi Village, which is at 43rd and Troost.

However, at one point in the hour-long documentary she recalled that while working in labor and delivery, she began journaling instances of doctors treating Black women differently, whether by stereotyping them or not taking them seriously. She did so because when she brought it up to the doctors’ attention they often didn’t believe her or explained that she misinterpreted them.

“We [healthcare professionals] don’t listen to them. Oftentimes in the healthcare setting we don’t see them or hear them. We make assumptions about how they should be cared for, and a lot of that way of thinking just needs a complete overhaul,” added Payne.

Williams, the film’s director, said the thing that surprised him the most during production was that every Black woman he spoke with had a negative experience with the U.S. healthcare industry.

“That was the biggest shock for me: these stories, I could have made an hours and hours long film because everybody has these stories. My hope [with this film] is that all Black families and all families know they have options when they are making their birthing choices.”

The film is currently being screened privately across the country. For more information on the work at Uzazi Village and how Payne is making a positive impact in the local community, click here .

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