Consulting with Accompany Doula Care
What does Accompany Doula Care bring to the table?
Since its founding, Accompany Doula Care made an intentional choice to work within the healthcare landscape in Massachusetts, where the majority of families receive their care. The result of this intentionality is years of experience in collaborating with health systems toward better outcomes and satisfaction with care for birthing people.
Accompany has experience contracting with health plans, federally-qualified health systems, philanthropic foundations, high-volume and localized maternity care hospitals, health departments, and grant-funded awards to deliver direct services to diverse families. Each engagement brings different perspectives and stakeholders along a continuum of familiarity and trust while working alongside doulas. Accompany has amassed expertise in working alongside interdisciplinary teams, overcoming challenges, building trust, and fostering education on the role of doulas in achieving more equitable health outcomes.
Accompany’s experience and expertise can benefit other systems and stakeholders who desire to work alongside doulas, overcome challenges when integrating doulas into the maternity care setting, and collaborate with doulas to fully implement equitable strategies to improve health. Accompany offers skills and guidance in the following areas.
How can Accompany help my organization reach its goals?
Planning for the upstart of a community doula program:
Many organizations desire to start a doula program or referral process but are overwhelmed by where to begin or all the factors to consider. Accompany can help to guide diverse stakeholders in navigating values and priorities in beginning or growing a partnership with doulas.
Integrating doulas into the clinical maternity care team:
Accompany has a long track record of educating diverse audiences about the role and benefits of doulas. When partnering with doulas, many providers come with past experiences working alongside doulas - both positive and negative. Other providers may have a limited understanding of the role of doulas, their scope of work, or how integrating doulas benefits care experience and health outcomes. Accompany brings years of experience facilitating difficult yet essential conversations towards better “teaming” among doulas and care providers.
Building sustainable partnerships for doula care:
Several organizations are introduced to working with doulas through time-bound opportunities, like grant awards. When those funds are exhausted, organizations are left planning for how to continue the work and momentum sustainably. Having a diverse set of funding streams, Accompany can help organizations anticipate shifts in the landscape to ensure continuity in supporting families and the doulas workforce alike.
Growing and enriching diverse community doula workforces:
When seeking to partner with doulas, many questions arise as to doula training, qualifications, hiring, and how to grow workforces that are reflective of the communities they serve. While Accompany is not a doula training organization, we are deeply embedded in hiring doulas, building a reflective community workforce, and meeting the ongoing professional education needs of community doula workforces.
Increasing accessibility: Partnering with policy makers at the state and local levels:
With more states increasing access to doulas, the policy itself is only the beginning of a years-long implementation with multiple stakeholders on the state and community levels. Accompany has worked with diverse workgroups to bridge silos among stakeholders in both policy creation and implementation settings.
Aligning multi-level stakeholders towards equitable outcomes for birthing families:
Implementation at the state- and community-level can engage several groups who may have worked together for years or be entirely new to working together. Accompany can help anticipate challenges, impact (intended and unintended), and aligned values when working in the wider healthcare landscape.
How can my organization work with Accompany in a consulting capacity?
We would love to hear from you about your goals for working with and alongside doulas. To begin an inquiry, please send an introduction to , and a staff member will respond with ways to explore whether Accompany’s skills can be of use to your organization and its work.
Examples of Past Accompany Consulting Projects
City of Worcester (MA) Department of Public Health:
Accompany was honored to consult for the City of Worcester Department of Public Health for three years. In Year 1, Accompany completed key informant interviews, which aimed to understand opportunities for a community doula workforce, particularly regarding breast/chestfeeding support among the LatinX community in Worcester. In Year 2, bilingual focus groups were conducted to better understand access to resources and barriers to breast/chestfeeding. In Year 3, Accompany created bilingual materials for education on how doulas can help support feeding goals. Year 3 also included grand rounds presentations, organizing breastfeeding and doula training for scholarship awardees, along with bystander training, trauma-informed care training, and Spinning Babies training.
The Burke Foundation (NJ)
Accompany was honored to work with the Burke Foundation during New Jersey’s rollout of a doula care benefit for Medicaid families in two phases. In Phase I, Accompany helped to craft a Request for Proposals for the creation of a Doula Learning Collaborative. In Phase II, Accompany conducted bilingual interviews with doulas seeking enrollment as providers and summarized areas of delay or barriers to enrollment.
Greater Lawrence Family Health Center (GLFHC) (MA)
Accompany was honored to work alongside GLFHC and Lawrence General Hospital on the upstart of their doula program. Accompany held regular meetings with providers and related staff to offer guidance on crafting operations for the program and increase buy-in among staff across two hospital systems.