During Black Maternal Health Week, our Head of Communications, Vanesther Hamer, shares her reflections on attending the Black Maternal Health Conference UK 2026 in London last month.
In March I had the privilege of joining colleagues to represent Black Maternity Matters at the Black Maternal Health Conference UK 2026 in London, and I’ve found myself thinking about what I heard at the event every day since.
While I attended as the communications lead for Health Innovation West of England, I soon realised that I wasn’t just there to help staff a stand; I was there as a participant in a movement that is shifting from years of grassroots community action towards – hopefully – a new era of system accountability.
The stories behind the statistics
The conference, hosted by The Motherhood Group, marked ‘10 Years of Impact’. Founder Sandra Igwe opened the day by sharing her personal journey, one that many Black mothers recognise all too well, of begging to be heard by midwives when she went into labour with her first child a decade ago. Today, her work has come full circle, with the very hospital trust where she had a traumatic experience now partnering with her organisation to deliver training.
This theme of ‘being heard’ was the heartbeat of the conference. Throughout the day, we heard harrowing but necessary stories:
- The ‘too high risk to ignore’ panel: mothers of multiples shared stories of missed miscarriages and interventions that came too early or too late because their pain was dismissed or their concerns were simply not believed.
- The ‘surviving birth’ panel: women related awful experiences, such as surviving sepsis and quad amputation, or being gaslit into believing life-threatening physical symptoms were “just postnatal depression”.
- The power of narrative: Genevieve Osoka shared the shocking story of being told she was “too cute to be in labour” at triage, only to give birth alone in a hospital lift minutes later.
These stories are not exceptions; they are part of a “constellation of biases” that lead to the staggering statistic we must never become desensitised to: Black women are twice as likely to die during pregnancy or the postnatal period than white women.
A systemic crisis demands a systemic response
A major headline from the conference was the need for a systemic response to this patient safety issue. A clear message came from national NHS leadership: Kate Brintworth (Chief Midwifery Officer for England) and Donald Peebles (National Clinical Director for Maternity) spoke of Black maternal health as an area of deep accountability.
They highlighted findings from Baroness Amos’ interim report, which identified six critical themes, most notably that racism and discrimination remain apparent in maternity teams and that a “second harm” is often caused when women report incidents but are not listened to.
Another positive headline was the role Black men can play. In a powerful panel on allyship, speakers like Dr Aduragbemi Banke-Thomas challenged the phrase “she got pregnant,” noting that pregnancy is a shared responsibility that requires education and nurturing from men starting from boyhood.
The call to action
As we mark Black Maternal Health Week, the message from the conference was clear: recognition of the crisis is not enough. We need intentional action.
- Training from day one: While there was lots of focus on the need for honesty and action when things go wrong, there was also a repeated call for a stronger focus on prevention. As my Black Maternity Matters colleague Beatrice Anomah commented, “where is the training for midwives and doctors before they go anywhere near families?” Cultural competency and anti-racist training must be mandatory for all healthcare staff. As Dr Janet Fyle, Policy Advisor for the Royal College of Midwives, suggested, perhaps leadership should lose bonuses if they fail to prioritise this. We must decolonise medical and midwifery education from day one, ensuring that the “softness, dignity, and respect” required for safe care are baked into initial training, not added as an afterthought.
- Shifting the power balance: The NHS must learn to be a “subservient partner” to the community, particularly if it is to regain the trust of so many who feel belittled and disenfranchised. Instead of the NHS always leading, it must support and fund the excellent work already happening in community-led, community-based organisations. Annabel Sowemimo said we need to be “demanding pathways that allow us to build bridges between organisations we know that can do the work, and how we bring them into services to help us do that work. Sometimes that’s very, very challenging to make those systems talk to each other.”
- Creating space: Again and again, people spoke about the need to find time and space to deal with so many of these issues, for both staff and parents – time and space to process trauma, to honour the transition of ‘matrescence’, and to utilise anti-racist training.
Final thoughts
I left London feeling that we can never reach a ‘saturation point’ for these stories. As long as the data reveals such stark inequities, we must continue to listen, learn, and push for the tangible change Sandra Igwe spoke of.
The Black Maternity Matters collaborative are proud to be part of this movement, supporting perinatal teams through in-depth anti-racist training and quality improvement projects. But as the conference reminded us, this is not just an issue for midwives and doctors. It is a system-wide responsibility.
Black mothers deserve more than just survival; they deserve softness, safety, and respect.
Posted on April 11, 2026 by Vanesther Hamer, Head of Communications
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