Ngozi Tibbs MPH, LCCE, IBCLC

Ngozi Tibbs holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Maternal Child Health and a Masters Degree in Public Health. Ngozi is a Certified Childbirth Trainer and Educator through Lamaze International (LCCE), an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) and the Co-Founder of The Pittsburgh Black Breastfeeding Circle (PBBC). Ngozi attended her first birth in 1999 and knew from that day that she had found her calling. She has served as both a private and community-based doula and currently provides childbirth education and lactation consulting at a local hospital. She describes her teaching style as interactive and engaging. Often known to share her wonderful personal birth stories (including her fifth child’s birth in the car), she believes the best way to approach birth and breastfeeding is through informed eyes with lots of support and yes, even humor. She is married to her college sweetheart and they are the proud parents of five children.

Session

The Shifting Roles of Doulas in Today’s Turbulent Times

Doula care began as support for middle-class clients by middle-class doulas. Now that doula care is proven to improve birth outcomes, the demand for doulas has grown, especially for people of color and those in poverty, who suffer worse birth outcomes than any other demographic. Yet, they represent a small percentage of those who receive doula care. Penny Simkin and Ngozi Tibbs will address this gap in this co-facilitated session by discussing the changing roles of today’s doulas to ensure that the needs of ALL childbearing people will be met.

Session

Taking a Deep Dive Into Unpacking Implicit Bias to Influence Doulas and the Birth or Postpartum Teams

You may hear the term “implicit bias”, but what does it really mean? What does implicit bias look like? How does implicit bias feel? At the end of this session, you’ll be able to answer those questions and begin to recognize implicit bias in yourself and others. We know that implicit bias (and explicit bias) places families of color and marginalized communities on track for risk of pre-term birth, morbidity and death. We will dive deeper to identify individual and group bias to learn how to dismantle implicit bias, calling it out in the moment, for the benefit of birthing and postpartum families. Doing this work will be your direct contribution towards combatting the inequities and disparities in the broken birthing U.S. health care system that lead to higher maternal morbidity and mortality rates and infant mortality rates.