Brad Edwards’ ‘Dads To Doulas’ Teaches Black Men To Support Partners During Childbirth Process

The Dads to Doulas Spring 2025 cohort commenced in February. Participants can complete a doula certification at the end of six weeks.

Father and community activist Brad Edwards is continuing to inspire the next generation of Black fathers through his Dads to Doulas program.

Designed to teach Black men everything that goes into the childbirth process, Dads to Doulas’ free, hands-on program provides expectant fathers with doula-level education and essential skills to support their families from pregnancy through infancy.

Not only does the initiative strive to reduce the Black maternal and infant mortality rates that have historically been higher compared to white women and infants, but the program has given Edwards an outlet to recover from his own personal experience.

Edwards’s lost his twin boys, who were delivered stillborn, in 2017. Learning his sons were birthed without signs of life left him and his partner heartbroken, but after expressing his grief to friends, his desire to educate men about pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum grew and sparked the attention of the St. Louis-based Dear Fathers platform in 2020.

By the time Edwards was preparing to welcome his baby girl Carielle, he was fully equipped with the necessary tools to support her mother.

Launched in 2024, the Dads to Doulas educational program was created essentially just to teach Black men about everything that goes into labor, the delivery process, perinatal health, perinatal loss, postpartum, and more.

“We have a maternal health crisis as it relates to Black women and babies, so this [is] something that’s very important, and it’s something that I think a lot of men may not know just because those numbers are out there, but they’re not presented in spaces that men exist in,” Edwards told WSFA 12 News earlier this month.

A study published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 49.5 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022. Rates for Black women were significantly higher than those of women who identified as white, Hispanic, or Asian. According to the Dear Fathers website, the mortality rate for Black infants in the St. Louis region is nearly twice that of white infants.

Dads to Doulas’ virtual and in-person programming covers such topics as the history of birth, length of pregnancy, anatomy and hormonal changes, home and hospital births, pharmacological pain management, infant care. Participants have can complete a doula certification program following the six-week training.

“We will not solve the maternal mortality crisis without men,” said certified Doula Kyra Betts, who helps with the program.

Dads to Doulas completed its first cohort in November 2024. “I can’t say enough of how much these brothers poured into one another and empowered one another every step of the way,” Edwards wrote on LinkedIn. The Spring 2025 cohort commenced in February.

For more information and updates on the next cohort, register online.