2023

A health center in Ohio, founded by two Black women, offers Black women a comfortable place to receive high-quality healthcare services.

In February 2022, alumna Da’na M. Langford, MS, CNP, (‘09 MS) realized her dream of opening a Black woman owned and operated clinic in Euclid, Ohio, with her business partner, Tenisha Gaines. The Village of Healing Center’s goal is to decrease racial disparities in healthcare and improve patient outcomes.

In the short time they’ve been open, Village of Healing co-founders Dána Langford and Tenisha Gaines have produced some promising results for moms and babies, doing their part to help reduce local maternal and infant mortality rates.

Complications in pregnancy and child birth are much more common in black women according to the CDC.

A national grant given to two Cleveland-area nonprofits is aimed at increasing Black women’s chances for healthy pregnancies and raising thriving infants by providing them with support from doulas and midwives.

Tenisha Gaines and Da’na Langford founded Village of Healing, a nonprofit pledged to improving birth outcomes for Black women, to provide a remedy for what they saw as ineffective and incomplete treatment during their careers as healthcare professionals.

During their years serving on committees examining infant mortality in Cuyahoga County, Healthcare workers Da’na Langford and Tenisha Gaines came to believe it takes boots on the ground in under-resourced neighborhoods, not large institutions, to make change

Da’Na and Tenisha walked us through each room, with all of their colors, flair, and artwork paying homage to Black individuals who have played a major part in helping to advance modern medicine, including Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy—known as the Mothers of Modern Gynecology—three enslaved women who were grotesquely experimented on in the name of gynecology

This Valentine’s Day the Village of Healing Center will officially start taking in patients, delivering love through health care that’ll meet the social and cultural needs of Black women.

Despite pandemic-related delays, Langford and Gaines say their goal remained: eliminating racial health disparities.