Interested in strengthening your knowledge and skills in maternal health?
Click here to complete our Project EMPATH Course Interest Form!
Educating the Maternal and PerinAtal workforce to advance healTHcare
Project EMPATH is a suite of three evidence-based, interactive courses designed to strengthen healthcare practitioners’ knowledge, skills, and confidence in providing respectful, equitable, and patient-centered maternal healthcare. Through immersive, simulation-based learning, Project EMPATH encourages practitioners to look beyond clinical care alone and consider the experiences, circumstances, and systemic factors that shape patients’ health and interactions with the healthcare system. These courses draw on insights from the Maternal Near Miss Study and Project ECHO, incorporating firsthand accounts that highlight the lived experiences of individuals from historically marginalized communities.
Respectful Maternity Care
This course equips healthcare practitioners with practical skills to recognize and address implicit bias, strengthen communication, and provide empathetic, culturally responsive, and patient-centered maternity care. Learners will explore how patients experience maternity care and consider how provider communication, bias, and clinical interactions can influence trust, safety, and quality of care.
Non-Medical Drivers of Maternal Health
Health outcomes are shaped by more than medical care. This course explores how non-medical drivers of health, including housing instability, food insecurity, transportation barriers, economic hardship, childcare, and other systemic inequities, can affect maternal health and access to care. Practitioners will gain practical tools and strategies for recognizing and incorporating non-medical drivers of health into clinical practice.
Maternal Substance Use Disorder
This course increases healthcare practitioners’ knowledge and confidence in caring for pregnant and postpartum individuals who use substances. Learners will explore the ways stigma and bias can affect patients’ experiences and engagement with care while developing strategies to promote trust, safety, and respectful communication. The course emphasizes stigma reduction, harm-reduction principles, and evidence-based approaches to supporting individuals with substance use disorder throughout pregnancy and postpartum.