We held our first community shareback event on Wednesday, March 24th. Check out a recap below:
The Supporting Our Ladies and Reducing Stress to Prevent Preterm Birth (SOLARS) study, is led by, in partnership with, and for women of color. Grounded in Reproductive Justice, SOLARS is funded by the UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBi-CA) and looks at how stress, resilience and coping affect gestational duration and preterm birth in Black and Latinx women in Oakland and San Francisco, California. This phase of the SOLARS Study was launched in February 2019 and is ending prematurely due to the COVID-19 pandemic and budget cuts. We were able to enroll 77 Black and Latinx women and follow them across their pregnancies and postpartum periods. For the March 2021 Collaboratory, shared preliminary findings about exposures to racism and other stressors, coping and resilience, and birthing experiences and outcomes.
Objectives:
- Share recruitment and retention strategies to engage Black and Latinx women in biospecimen research studies.
- Describe the different types of stress exposures and coping strategies used across the lifetime and during pregnancy among Black and Latinx women.
- Communicate how data use guidelines can be used to give communities the power to hold researchers accountable to use data to answer questions that are important to Black and Brown communities.
Speakers
Brianne Taylor
SOLARS Program Manager
Brianne Taylor has been a Community Researcher for almost 5 years. She is currently at UCSF where she assists with research that centers the voices of communities of color, prioritizes ending BIPOC health disparities, and resists mother blaming. She has contributed to several studies including the Benioff Community Innovators (BCI) project, the Supporting Our Ladies and Reducing Stress to prevent preterm birth (SOLARS) study. Bri currently lives in San Francisco with her 8-year-old daughter, and in her spare time she loves to smell babies and care for moms as a doula.
Gabriela Negrete
SOLARS Clinical Research Coordinator
Mrs. Negrete is a clinical research coordinator with the SOLARS study serving Latinx women in Oakland and San Francisco. She was born and raised in the East Bay and is committed to research grounded in community partnership.
Chakiya Clary
SOLARS Clinical Research Coordinator
Ms. Clary is a clinical research coordinator with the SOLARS Study serving Black women in Oakland and San Francisco. She was born and raised and San Francisco and is committed to research grounded in and in partnership with community.
Jaontra Henderson
SOLARS Project Analyst
Ms. Henderson is a project analyst for the California Preterm Birth Initiative and SOLARS Study. She was born and raised in Oakland and is Black and Nicaraguan. She is currently training to be a doula.
Safyer McKenzie-Sampson, MSPH
SOLARS Graduate Student Researcher
Ms. McKenzie-Sampson is a doctoral student in Epidemiology and Translational Science at the University of California, San Francisco. She is a graduate student researcher with the SOLARS study, and a Toronto native of African-Caribbean descent.
Zoe Carrasco, RN
SOLARS Graduate Student Researcher
Zoe started her health care career serving immigrants/refugees with free health care at Street Level Health Project. She continued her health care dedication to underserved communities at La Clinica de La Raza, San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center, where she gained knowledge in perinatal and reproductive health. Shortly after beginning at San Antonio, she began her doula practice at UCSF doula volunteer program. Even with the challenges encountered by the women she served they never failed to prove their resiliency during their pregnancy and labors.
Spoken Word Poets
Yvette Mari Robles
Community Healer
Yvette Marí Robles is a Medicine Woman at Pathfinder Well Care. She is devoted to embodying, nurturing and sustaining the values of love and liberty. Her work is integrative situating healing in the hearts and hands of communities and mother earth, prioritizing self-determination, transformation, and inner work as social change. As a consultant and coach in the education, health and human services she offers capacity building opportunities that center health and healing potential, power and purpose, building individual and community resilience.
Ashley Chambers
Community Activist
Ashley Chambers is a passionate storyteller and community activist from Oakland, California. As an Oakland native and proud mother, Ashley has a passion for lifting up her community and helping people of color gain access to social, educational and economic opportunity. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and worked as a journalist for nearly a decade covering social justice issues in the Bay Area. In addition to writing poetry, Ashley works in communications dedicated to lending her voice to advance social and racial justice in today’s society.
