Commonsense Childbirth Inc. (CSC) is a non-profit organization that provides prenatal and postpartum care services as well as full-service midwifery care and birthing center services. CSC runs The Birth Place birthing center and the Easy Access Prenatal Care Clinic. The clinic utilizes The JJ Way® MCH healthcare system to provide accessible, culturally-relevant midwifery-based care to uninsured and underinsured women who prefer to birth in a hospital.

Commonsense Childbirth’s vision is that all women have a healthy baby.

Our mission is to ensure access to timely maternity healthcare particularly for minority, low-income, uninsured, and underinsured women; and to provide practical, social, educational and emotional support, resources and referrals as a means to improving the chances for a positive pregnancy outcome.

Commonsense Childbirth was started in 1998 by midwife Jennie Joseph, LM, CPM, who currently serves as its executive director. Concerned about the tremendous disparities in birth outcomes for African-American and low-income women, and believing that the midwifery model could help improve birth outcomes for all babies, Joseph and her team worked to create a midwifery-based model – The JJ Way® -- that was culturally relevant and accessible to all women. She established the Easy Access Clinic as the vehicle to deliver The JJ Way® model to women who were not initially comfortable with the idea of natural childbirth (although many of the Easy Access clients do go on to deliver at The Birth Place).

Regardless of birth location, The JJ Way® has proven successful in reducing low-birth-weight and preterm birth, the greatest causes of infant mortality, in a population of women considered at risk for poor birth outcomes.

"We started with the fundamental premise that every woman wants a healthy baby and every woman deserves one. When a woman sees that you firmly believe that, she too is motivated to do the best she can for herself and her baby." Jennie Joseph, LM, CPM

Did you know that:

• infant mortality is the death of a baby before he reaches his first birthday?
• the rate is calculated as 'number of deaths per every 1000 live births'?
• the USA ranks 41st out of 222 countries for infant mortality
• nationally 6 babies of every 1000 died in 2006
• nationally 14 African American babies of every 1000 died in 2006 and in many communities it is much worse
• our government set goals that by 2010 infant mortality for all races would be 4.5 per 1000. (Healthy People 2010 - objectives 16-10a and 16-10b, respectively)
• prematurity (being born too soon, before 37 weeks of pregnancy) and low birth weight (being born too small, weighing less than 5lbs 8ozs at birth) is one of the leading causes of infant death
• prematurity and low birth weight can cause short term and long term deficits to babies that survive

Jennie speaks often about Infant Mortality:

"These are not just numbers on a page from yet another spreadsheet," Joseph points out, "rather these statistics represent shattered lives, dashed hopes, and unfulfilled potential as families grieve the loss of their loved one. It is impossible to measure the pain."

You can read more about Jennie's Campaign For Healthier Babies here