Nubia Martin, birth assistant to licensed midwives, Myla Flores, Maryam co-founder, Tonya Lewis Lee, film producer, Bruce McIntyre, Maryam partner and saveArose Foundation founder and Carla Williams, co-founder of Maryam (left to right), gather to celebrate the launch of Maryam Reproductive Health + Wellness, while honoring the maryam plant, used in pregnancy and labor. (Credit: Courtney Griffin)
Maryam Reproductive Health + Wellness, a maternal health clinic dedicated to transforming the prenatal, childbirth and postpartum journey for women of color, officially opened its doors on October 18.
Myla Flores and Carla Williams, co-founders, launched this center in response to the Bronx’s exceedingly high mortality rates within Black and brown communities. Their goal is to redefine and revolutionize maternity and reproductive care in the Bronx.
Bruce McIntyre, partner at Maryam and founder of saveArose Foundation, expressed his gratitude for the clinic’s opening. “Today we celebrate progress,” said Mcintyre. “We are prioritizing better birthing solutions, so we can create full families and memories that should have never been lost.”
McIntyre’s activism was ignited by the tragic loss of his partner, Amber Rose Isaac, whose death he firmly attributes to medical negligence at Montefiore Moses and Einstein hospitals. Following troubling experiences at Montefiore, the couple sought help from Nubia Martin, a birth assistant to licensed midwives, during Isaac’s pregnancy. Martin quickly identified Isaac as high-risk due to dangerously low platelet levels, indicating a need for urgent care.
On the last day of her life, April 20, 2020, Einstein doctors diagnosed Isaac with HELLP syndrome, a rare life-threatening complication that affects the liver and blood clotting. She died after an emergency cesarean section.
Black women are far more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than white women in New York City. According to a study by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, between 2016 and 2020, Black women had a mortality rate of 101.1 deaths per 100,000 live births—four times higher than white women. These racial disparities exist because of institutionalized racism, lack of affordable and quality healthcare and implicit bias, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The Bronx’s mortality rate is higher than New York State’s as a whole and the mortality rate for Black women is much higher than for women of other races,” Ruben Diaz Jr., then-Bronx borough president, wrote a report in 2021.
In the Bronx, the maternal mortality rate was 36.2 deaths per 100,000 births in 2014, significantly higher than the citywide rate of 18.9 deaths per 100,000 from 2011 to 2015. This disparity is particularly pronounced for Black women, who faced a more than double citywide mortality rate of 51.0 per 100,000 during the same period.
Flores’ commitment to mitigating the risk of maternal death sprouted in 2006, when she began supporting families as a home birth assistant, deepening in doula work through the years. She then founded the Womb Bus in 2022, a mobile wellness hub that traverses throughout the Bronx, offering prompt, essential services, including perinatal support, preconception education, and reproductive counseling.
Maryam, a three-office clinic, offers reproductive and gynecological care, integrative wellness and community education. Some of these services include lactation support, acupuncture therapy, and pregnancy and postpartum care.
With only two birth centers in the city—none in the Bronx—women face limited birthing options. Williams and Flores are working alongside their team of midwives, health professionals who provide maternal-based care and wellness providers to build community coalitions. Their goal is to introduce comprehensive maternal health legislation this upcoming fall, aimed at increasing midwifery education and birth centers in the Bronx.
“I want to see so many more birth centers thrive and blossom,” said Flores. “They need to be accepted as a valid option of care that is respected and integrated into our healthcare system.”
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated when Flores’ commitment to mitigating the risk of maternal death began.
