Uzazi Village is bringing a DJ, food trucks, and a kids' relay race to Stanley Durwood Soccer Stadium on UMKC's campus this Saturday from 3 to 6 p.m., but the event carries a heavier purpose underneath the music: raising awareness of Black infant and maternal health disparities. Tickets cost $25 and are available online or at the gate.
The Black Infant Mortality Awareness Walk is hosted by Uzazi Village, the Kansas City nonprofit that has spent 14 years working to close those gaps, according to KSHB 41 Kansas City. The organization provides doula education, childbirth education, and prenatal and postnatal support to families across the region. Clay told the station about the stories she hears from the women in her work.
A Doctor Isn't Fixed and Neither Is a Provider
Clay also emphasized that patients have more control than many realize. She said Medicaid recipients can choose providers other than the one assigned to them, and she advised people to educate themselves and ask their doctors questions rather than accept care passively. Clay described self-advocacy as key for mothers navigating a system that has historically failed Black families.
The stakes behind that advice are stark. Black infants in the United States die at twice the rate of white infants, according to the CDC, and Black women face a maternal mortality rate more than three times higher than white women, per the same federal data cited by KSHB 41 Kansas City. Those national disparities underscore the concern behind the Missouri event.
A Neighborhood Built Around the Need
Uzazi Village was founded in 2012 by nurse and lactation consultant Hakima Tafunzi Payne and co-founders to combat these outcomes, setting up headquarters at 4232 Troost Avenue, a street that historically served as a racial and economic dividing line in Kansas City due to 20th-century housing covenants. Hoodline previously reported on the organization's presence at that address in coverage of the Free Soul Yoga Fest held there in August.
The need has only grown more acute in the surrounding urban core. In September 2025, Research Medical Center, located near Uzazi Village in southern Kansas City, permanently closed its labor, delivery, and neonatal intensive care units, removing a major maternal care facility from the area, according to KCUR. County-level data compounds the concern: March of Dimes assigned Jackson County an F grade for preterm births, and local health department figures show Black infants in Eastern Jackson County have historically experienced an infant mortality rate of 9 per 1,000 live births compared to 4 per 1,000 for white infants, per Access Health News.
State Policy Is Shifting, Slowly
Some structural change is underway. Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe signed a law in July expanding Medicaid reimbursement for doula visits and free childbirth education classes for low-income mothers, according to Missourinet. Since Missouri first introduced Medicaid reimbursement for doulas under an emergency administrative rule in October 2024, more than 625 MO HealthNet participants have used doula services during pregnancy and postpartum recovery as of May 2026, the St. Louis American reports.
Statewide, Missouri received a D- and ranked 16th worst nationally for preterm births in the cited March of Dimes report. Against that backdrop, Saturday's walk at Stanley Durwood Soccer Stadium offers families a chance to learn about Uzazi Village's resources directly, alongside the music, food trucks, and kids' activities organizers have planned for the afternoon.
