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Over the years, IMR has provided support for practitioners in resource-poor regions pursuing a formal education in healthcare through the Eddy Rose Excelente Fund. The fund was created in honor of Nicaraguan Ob/Gyn Dr. Eddy Rose, a great doctor and friend that our Executive Director Ambereen had known since 2001. In his spirit of caring and kindness, we established the Eddy Rose Excelente Fund (Fondo Excelente) that provides scholarship to help pay the grantee’s tuition in their program of choice. We currently support two scholars through this fund and we’re excited to add a third. Currently, these are our scholars:

  • Destra, Leogane, Haiti: We met Jesumene Jean Paul, a former nursing student and resident of Destra who had to discontinue her education due to financial constraints. Her devotion to caring for others as well as to her childhood home made her an excellent addition to the IMR family as a collaborator.  Since then, IMR has funded her re-entry into nursing school to continue honing her clinical skills.  Jesumene also assists IMR by conducting follow up visits and providing meds to the patient population established during IMR clinics.

  • Managua, Nicaragua: Carlos Rose is Eddy’s nephew who is currently a fourth-year medical student in the five-year medical program at Managua American University (UAM). Carlos has been supported by the scholarship since his second year and has worked with IMR’s Executive Director Ambereen in the operative room when she works in Granada, Nicaragua. He plans to become a surgeon and practice in Nicaragua. Carlos, who is kind, gentle and dedicated, was inspired to go into medicine by Eddy.

In addition to our two current scholars, IMR will be offering a scholarship to support Black birth workers. Maternal healthcare in the United States has seen a crisis over the last two decades with pregnancy-related mortality rate steadily inclining. While maternal death rates around the world have dropped by more than a third from 2000 to 2015, the rates in the United States has more than doubled since 1987. According to data from CDC, significant racial disparity in pregnancy- related mortality contributes to the increased rate. Between 2011-2016, Black women were 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women. The maternal mortality rate for Black women during that same period was 42.4 per 100,000-- worse than 85 other countries around the globe.

A solution to this epidemic must be multi-pronged. However, we believe that one of the ways to decrease the disparity is by supporting more Black individuals who are committed to caring for birthing people. Representation matters and can be vital to promoting safe, equitable and respectful maternal care. We plan to support future midwives and doulas as the focus of this scholarship because we believe that these two groups of birth workers have the potential to majorly impact the outcomes of pregnant people. Studies show that when cared for by a midwife, women are less likely to deliver by Cesarean Section, a surgical procedure that can increase a person’s risk of hemorrhage, infection, blood clots and other surgical complications. It has also been shown that for people whose labors are attended by doulas (a person who provides emotional and physical support during labor, birth, and postpartum period), they were more likely to have spontaneous vaginal birth and less likely to require pain medication including epidurals.

While we know that midwives and doulas can have a positive impact on birthing people, it is also evident that the community of birth workers is currently overwhelmingly white. For example, according to the 2019 Demographic Report by the American Midwifery Certification Board, 86.9% of Certified Midwives (CM) and Certified Nurse-Midwives (CNM) in the United States identified as White or Caucasian and 6.31% as Black or African American. Black birthing people deserve to have access to care-providers from their communities. Our hope is that by offering this scholarship, it will decrease some of the financial barriers put upon Black students who desire to enter the profession. We will inaugurate this scholarship with an award to a midwifery student at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, NY.

For more information or an application, please email info@internationalmedicalresponse.org.

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