2nd Edition of the Public Health and Midwifery World Conference 2026

Pregnancy and birth behind bars constitute an under-addressed public health emergency. In the United States, an estimated 58,000 pregnant people are incarcerated each year, the vast majority of whom are women of color. Despite the scale of this crisis, carceral maternal health remains peripheral in mainstream public health and midwifery training, policy, and practice. Held & Healing is a community education and organizing series developed through a collaboration among Second Chance Federation (SCF), DocuCourse, and Be Great Together that directly confronts this gap by centering the voices, lived expertise, and survival of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated pregnant people as the foundation of reproductive health advocacy.

This session combines documentary screening with an interactive, skills-based workshop grounded in SCF's Held & Healing community toolkits. Directed by Avrell Stokes of DocuCourse and Be Great Together, the documentary segments illuminate the intersecting forces of racial inequity, systemic neglect, poverty, and criminalization that shape birth outcomes in carceral settings.

Workshop participants will engage with tools including community listening session design, power mapping, the PAER storytelling framework (Problem, Action, Experience, Result), trusted messenger development, and the ethical documentation of community experience. Collectively, these tools equip midwives, public health practitioners, doulas, and community advocates to center lived experience rather than institutional convenience in the design and delivery of maternal health support.