Black Maternal Mental Health Week — Online Gathering

An online gathering during Black Maternal Mental Health Week, the annual mid-July awareness week focused on the specific mental-health conditions of Black mothers across pregnancy, postpartum, and the broader maternal arc. The gathering convenes members of the Black Maternal Health and Postpartum Mental Health network across the diaspora for a focused evening of structured conversation, reflection, and community-building.

The gathering structure is a 90-minute event with three primary segments. The first 30 minutes is structured framing: a brief presentation on the contemporary data and policy landscape for Black maternal mental health, delivered by a senior member of the network with clinical or research background. The next 30 minutes is breakout-group conversation in small groups of approximately six members each, organized by stage (pregnancy, postpartum, longer-arc maternal arc, loss-and-grief). The final 30 minutes is whole-group sharing of themes that emerged in the breakouts and a closing reflection.

The gathering is co-facilitated by senior members of the Black Maternal Health and Postpartum Mental Health network. The facilitator team rotates across each year's gathering and includes a clinician member, a community-organizer member, and a doula or midwife member to provide varied vantage points.

Who this is for: Black and African-diaspora mothers, pregnant women, women trying to conceive, women in pregnancy loss or infant loss, doulas, midwives, L&D nurses, perinatal psychiatrists, and adjacent clinicians serving the Black maternal-mental-health community. Members of the Black Maternal Health and Postpartum Mental Health network and the Reproductive Justice Network are particularly welcome.

What attendees will leave with: a structured engagement with the contemporary Black maternal-mental-health landscape. Specific connections with breakout-group partners that may continue across the year. Continuing access to the network threads for ongoing engagement.

Logistics: virtual via the platform's event infrastructure during Black Maternal Mental Health Week. 90-minute duration. Capacity 150 reflecting the broad interest in the conversation; registered count tracked at the platform-event-detail level. Recording available to registered attendees only and embargoed from broader sharing in keeping with the confidential orientation of the network.

Pre-event prep: registered attendees receive a structured pre-event briefing document one week prior covering the contemporary data and the discussion framework. The briefing includes specific recommended reading and background context.

Post-event continuation: a follow-up thread within the Black Maternal Health and Postpartum Mental Health network extends the conversation across the weeks following the gathering.

Cost: free of ticket cost in keeping with the platform's broader Black-maternal-health programming policy. The platform's event infrastructure supports the coordination and facilitator hosting.

This gathering has run annually during Black Maternal Mental Health Week across multiple years. Attendees from prior years have reported specific outcomes that justify the format: durable connections with breakout partners, continued engagement with the network, and meaningful annual reflection on the specific Black-maternal-mental-health themes that the network holds across the year. The gathering structure is replicable across future years.

The platform's broader Black-maternal-health infrastructure supports this annual gathering. The Black Maternal Health and Postpartum Mental Health network runs continuous discussion threads across the year and hosts adjacent events including the quarterly virtual clinician-and-doula-and-mother gatherings and the annual in-person convening that rotates between Atlanta, New York, and Washington.

The annual Black Maternal Mental Health Week creates the broader awareness moment around the specific clinical and structural conditions of Black maternal mental health. The platform's online gathering during the week creates the community-specific reflection and conversation space that the broader awareness moment supports but does not directly produce.

Registration opens four weeks before Black Maternal Mental Health Week and typically reaches capacity within two weeks. Cancellation policy follows the platform's standard event-cancellation framework for free events.

Accessibility provisions include live captioning of the framing presentation and whole-group sharing segments, recorded captions on the post-event recording, scheduled-pause-points in the breakout-group format, and ASL interpretation available on request submitted at least two weeks before the gathering. The confidential orientation of the breakout-group segment means that breakout recordings are not produced; the framing and whole-group segments are recorded.

The gathering format has evolved across multiple annual iterations. The early iterations were single-segment events; attendee feedback consistently surfaced the value of the breakout-group segment for the specific community-conversation work that the cohort wanted, leading to the current three-segment structure.

The gathering is one component of the platform's broader Black-maternal-health infrastructure. Adjacent programming includes the Black Maternal Health and Postpartum Mental Health network's monthly threads, the quarterly virtual gatherings, the annual in-person convening, and individual mentor sessions with senior network members in clinical, doula, midwife, and community-organizer roles.

The annual gathering has produced sustained community engagement with the Black-maternal-mental-health work across the years it has run. The gathering's broader community-context — Black Maternal Mental Health Week itself, the Black Maternal Health and Postpartum Mental Health network's ongoing infrastructure, and the broader Black-maternal-health advocacy ecosystem — provides continuing engagement context across the year.

The platform's event registration confirmation includes a calendar invitation for the gathering, the platform's video-conferencing access details, and the structured pre-event briefing document with contemporary data and discussion framework. The platform's broader confidentiality framework applies to the breakout-group content; the framing presentation and whole-group sharing segments are recorded and made available to registered attendees following the gathering.

The Black Maternal Mental Health Week annual awareness moment is co-organized by a coalition of organizations including the Shades of Blue Project, the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, and several adjacent partner organizations. The platform's online gathering coordinates with the broader week's programming and does not duplicate the work the coalition organizations are leading. The platform's gathering is one of multiple events during the week and is positioned to provide the specific community-conversation register that the platform's membership has surfaced as needed.

Members of the Black Maternal Health and Postpartum Mental Health network are encouraged to engage with the broader coalition programming during the week alongside the platform's gathering. The platform's discussion thread shares specific coalition-event links and registration details across the lead-up to the week each year.