Birth Detroit is Black-led, community-based midwifery practice and the first free-standing birth center in Detroit.
The organization’s co-founder, Elon Geffrard, says the practice is expanding the services it offers, with a continued emphasis on helping marginalized families.
“If you’re wanting to have an out-of-hospital birth experience in the hands of midwives, we also provide easy access care in the hands of midwives for prenatal care and individuals planning a hospital-based birth, we do GYN or well-woman services, and soon we’ll be offering well baby care,” she says.
Geffrard says Birth Detroit has served 500 families in the 6 years since its inception in 2020. She says the nonprofit also offers childbirth education classes, a fatherhood support group and postpartum classes.
Birth Detroit has been a freestanding birth center since October 2024. “Currently, we are at 12 babies who have been born at our birth center, and we are on call waiting for the next few,” she shares.
Making birthing safer
The nonprofit focuses on empowering Black, brown, and Indigenous families, often who face higher rates of maternal and infant mortality.
“In public health we know that if we tend to those most disparately impacted, those who have experienced higher rates of illness, higher rates of death, higher rates of marginalization as well. We level up the entire ship, if you will. Everybody gets to rise up,” she says.
Last year the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said maternal and infant mortality rates were on the decline in the state.
Geffrard says the nonprofit’s standard of care is to have healthy moms and babies.
“We attend and build with intention to support those who, again, are most pushed to the margins, but thusly, we get to provide and offer to everyone the highest quality of care, the highest standard of care,” she explains.
She says Birth Detroit works to provide integrated maternal health care to keep people safe, working with a network of health care professionals.
“Sometimes, people no longer should be in the care of a low-risk provider like a midwife. They do need a maternal-fetal medicine doctor or an OB GYN,” she says.
Geffrard says babies born in the center do not have low birth weight or premature birth.
Providing the best in care
Geffrard says Detroit families deserve the best care. The center provides culturally sensitive care to advance their goal of making high quality care accessible for marginalized communities.
The Michigan Black Birthworker Directory was created to have a central database of providers who serve Black and brown communities. It includes doulas, midwives, and lactation professionals, along with other service providers.
MDHHS says the state now has more than 1,000 registered doulas, nonmedical birthing assistants, providing support for moms and families to improve birth outcomes.
Geffrard says Birth Detroit worked to pass legislation, including the Momnibus 9 bill package to improve maternal health for communities of color, which passed in April 2025 in Michigan, but is pending in Congress.
“We want to build trees that we will not enjoy the shade of. Our children’s children’s children deserve safety. They deserve justice. They deserve love. They deserve trustworthy care. And that’s, I think, what we’re aiming to do every day,” says Geffrard.
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