Cambridge Health Alliance is beginning to reopen its treasured Cambridge Birth Center, a residential building across Camelia Avenue from Cambridge Hospital where patients could experience a homelike childbirth before the center stopped delivering babies in March 2020, early in the pandemic. The center had been operating since 1998.
The building’s renovated first floor reopened Aug. 14 for clinic visits, CHA spokesperson David Cecere said. He said he didn’t know when work would be completed to allow deliveries. “Remaining renovations are mostly complete – furniture and some pieces of equipment are back-ordered,” he said.
The CHA website says the Alliance planned to “renovate and update the three birthing rooms” in the center “to ensure a welcoming and comfortable environment for patients and families.”
The 2022 closings of the CHA facility and one in Beverly operated by Beth Israel Lahey Health left only one freestanding birth center operating: in Northampton. A new facility, Neighborhood Birth Center, is planned in Roxbury. Organizers hope it will open next year.
The road to reopening the Cambridge center has been rocky. As other businesses and services resumed when the Covid emergency ended, the center remained closed to birthing. Organizers fighting the shuttering of the Beverly birth center in 2022 erroneously asserted that Cambridge was about to reopen its facility, asking why couldn’t Beth Israel keep its center open. Alliance chief executive Assaad Sayah wrote a letter to city councillors saying “staffing shortages, programmatic issues, facility concerns and significant cost issues have led CHA to keep performing all deliveries” in Cambridge Hospital.
The Alliance hired a consultant to identify what needed to be done to reopen; it would cost $1 million, state Rep. Marjorie Decker said in a report to constituents last summer. She said she was responsible for having a $1 million appropriation included in the state budget for the fiscal year that ended June 30.
An outdated facility isn’t the only problem. The number of doulas, nonmedical staff who support mothers before, during and after childbirth, has dropped, an Alliance board of trustees committee was told in June 2023. Psychiatric screening and breastfeeding services at home were curtailed, the committee was told.
CHA spokesperson Cecere said the Alliance is “rebuilding our doula program” with a grant from attorney general Andrea Campbell. He said psychiatric services are available to mothers but didn’t indicate whether they are the same screening services that had been reduced.
“Breastfeeding support is provided by our WIC program and our doulas,” Cecere said. “We are working to restart our breastfeeding support group.”
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.
Thank you Rep. Decker for getting $1 million in budget money for this reopening, keeping pressure on CHA to make this a priority, and for leading the maternal health omnibus to passage, which will allow this birth center to remain staffed and open. Evan MacKay could never.
Evan MacKay wasn’t in office, how could they have done this?