Monitoring & Evaluation Intern

The maternal health landscape in Massachusetts is evolving with MassHealth’s recent move to cover doula services through pregnancy, delivery, and the first year of the infant’s life. This shift has significantly changed access to doula services. In response, DotHouse Health, Codman Square Health Center, and Mattapan Community Health Center have received funding from Massachusetts’ Department of Public Health to launch a doula fellowship program aimed at supporting its vulnerable pregnant population in Dorchester and Mattapan. Over the next 2.5 years, we plan to develop a specialized curriculum that will enroll and financially support 20 community members to receive doula training, preceptorship and the opportunity to pursue additional certifications to train as community health workers and certified lactation consultants. We aim to recruit participants from the Dorchester and Mattapan communities to offer culturally congruent care for our health center’s diverse patient population. To support a collaborative approach to fellowship design that aligns with patients’ needs and the Massachusetts-based doula community at large, we seek to conduct a landscape analysis to understand existing stakeholders and identify opportunities for collaboration. This analysis will explore the current landscape of doula services and how our fellowship can contribute to birth equity across the state. As part of the grant requirement, we will also need to conduct an evaluation of the fellowship program to assess its impact.