Photo: Max Herman/City Bureau
What is The Cord?
The Cord is an ongoing project to deliver news and resources directly to pregnant women, mothers and anyone else who wants information for expecting moms in Chicago.
In April, we launched a free text-message service where you can receive links and resources directly to your phone.
Who are we? (from top left) Janaya Greene, Camille Powell, Sarah Conway, Emeline Posner and Caroline Olsen are reporters with City Bureau, a civic journalism lab based in Woodlawn.
In June we passed ownership of this service to the amazing women at Chicago Birthworks Collective. You can still sign up and receive their text messages at the link below.
Special Issue
On June 11, 2019, City Bureau published a special Maternal Health Issue with Austin Weekly News. Inside, readers found 10 stories that tackled issues of racial inequity in maternal health by focusing on community solutions and resilience. The data shows that there’s a maternal health crisis in America, and it’s especially dire for Black women, even more so in the state of Illinois. But through interviews with birth workers and dozens of conversations with moms living on the South and West Sides, we found that there’s so much more to the story.
Click here for full issue PDF.
(Individual story links below.)
Maternal Health Issue with Austin Weekly News
Our challenge: What numbers reveal about Black maternal health
Beat the baby blues: Where moms can find mental health support
City Bureau public newsroom connects moms with birth workers
Other stories by The Cord team
Birthworkers Are on the Front Lines of Chicago’s Maternal Health Crisis (Chicago magazine)
'MOMMA's Act' to lower U.S. maternal deaths (Austin Weekly News)
Why racial disparities in U.S. maternal health are so terrible, and what you can do about it (Black Youth Project)
Chicago Is Making the Case for Releasing Pregnant Inmates (The Atlantic)