On Tuesday, Brown University Health announced the 12 members of its Community Advisory Panel (CAP) that will discuss the fate of our beloved Newport Hospital’s Noreen Stonor Drexel Birthing Center. Of the 12 individuals named, five of them are employed in some capacity by Brown University Health and two of them sit on the Newport Hospital Foundation Board; I believe that most of them truly have the best interests of the community in mind, despite the fact there are significant segments of the community unrepresented by this group. To be clear, I applaud every individual who is able to serve on the panel, while still wondering if there’s more that can be done by Brown University Health to make this feel like a community-wide process. I appreciate that it is impractical to invite every single key stakeholder into the room, but those who would be most impacted by the closure of the birthing center – notably, those who do not have the means to travel elsewhere to attend to their reproductive needs, and those within the BIPOC community, who already face statistically and significantly worse maternal health outcomes – may not have a direct voice in this process.
Furthermore, due to the fact that all members of this Community Advisory Panel are required to sign a confidentiality agreement prior to their participation, I am concerned that there may not be as much clarity as the community deserves regarding the discussions and outcomes of these meetings. There are thousands of people in Newport County who have a right to know what’s going on throughout this process, and Brown University Health has a duty to update the community on what takes place in these closed-door meetings by virtue of the fact that they operate Newport County’s only hospital. The whole community has a very real and critical stake in this outcome, and I urge Brown University Health to be open with the community about when the general public can expect regular and candid briefings about this process and any relevant information discussed at these meetings.
I would also recommend that, when considering a Community Advisory Panel that will determine the future of our island’s families, the timing of these meetings be a little more family-friendly. There will be four meetings to determine the birthing center’s survival, which will take place from 4:00 – 5:30 pm on weekdays between now and the end of April – the first of which will occur the Monday before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel week in the United States. I was, in fact, invited to participate in the Community Advisory Panel, but I had to decline due to my working hours and our daycare’s pickup time, which is one of the latest on the island. It is understandably impossible to accommodate every individual’s needs and schedule, but the time selected for the CAP’s meetings does seem to unintentionally exclude most parents and working individuals without flexible schedules, many of whom will likely need or have already used the birthing center’s services.
Newport Hospital’s birthing center has provided exemplary, evidence-based care for decades and is recognized by the World Health Organization and UNICEF as “baby friendly,” becoming only the 40th hospital in the US to earn that distinction. I speak from personal experience when I say that it is the exception, not the rule, to find safe, high-quality, compassionate care in one place for reproductive needs, and the Noreen Stonor Drexel Birthing Center goes above and beyond to deliver just that. I applaud every person who is selflessly sacrificing their personal and professional time to be a part of this panel and hope that Brown University Health will truly listen and learn from the individuals they have selected about exactly what this birthing center means to our community, the lives it saves, and the profound impact it has on the very fabric of our island.
Cassie Voll
Co-founder of Moms Over Margins
