With course instructors from academic, private, and community organizations, Postpartum Pittsburgh is proud to present this opportunity for professionals in diverse specialties to gain knowledge about perinatal health and its relationship to mental health. Increasing knowledge and collaboration among community agencies, birth workers, and hospital-based clinicians can increase the health of birthing people and their families. This conference aims to improve communication and trust among diverse organizations to improve collaboration and teamwork that supports mental and physical health in minoritized childbearing populations.

Perinatal depression is a prevalent public health problem which affects at least 14.5% (1 out of 7) of new mothers, with two to three-fold higher rates in minority, single, and low-income mothers. The health of perinatal women is critical to shaping the physical, socio-emotional, and behavioral development of offspring. Many mothers go untreated due to lack of knowledge about how to identify perinatal mental illness as well as lack of knowledge about evidence-based treatments and preventive strategies in the perinatal period. Birthing individuals from cultural and racial minority groups experience 3-4-fold higher rates of morbidity and mortality across the perinatal period. Suicide, homicide and overdose deaths comprise the greatest cause of maternal deaths in a 33-US state analysis between 2010-2019. Given the high prevalence, extensive impact, and complexity of treating perinatal mental health disorders, it is imperative to update and increase consistency in knowledge disseminated to practitioners who have contact with childbearing individuals, which not only includes therapists and psychiatrists, but also practitioners of primary care, obstetrics and gynecology, general adult psychiatry, pediatrics, as well as nurses and social workers in all these clinical settings.

Structural racism has shaped the practice of medicine overall and particularly Obstetrics and Gynecology and Psychiatry. It is increasingly understood that racism, not race, is the cause for increased pregnancy-associated morbidity and mortality in people of color. Severe maternal morbidity (SMM) occurs at rates 3-4-fold higher in black relative to white women and is 12-fold higher in some cities. Birthing people who are foreign born, both with and without authorized immigration status, are also at elevated risk for perinatal morbidity and mortality. Vulnerabilities common to both black and immigrant women include discrimination, trauma, poor social support, and financial stress. Unique to immigrant are struggles with threat of deportation, lack of access to health insurance, challenges of assimilation, and a language barrier. For these minority groups, barriers to mental health care abound, including distrust of the healthcare system as a result of past victimization and trauma, fear that seeking

treatment will be punitive, lack of providers of color, lack of culturally relevant care, long wait times for mental health appointments, lack of childcare during appointments, lack of transportation, patient prioritization of more emergent problems in the family or home, the stigma of seeking out mental health services, high cost of care, and lack of health insurance. Postpartum Pittsburgh is dedicated to facilitating cross-system, academic-private-community collaboration and dialogue in the interest of increasing cultural sensitivity among mental health practitioners and thereby optimize the delivery of mental health care to all birthing people in an equitable manner. An important modality for education at Postpartum Pittsburgh conference is the “Listening Session,” during which panel members share curated, personal experiences