Walmart to include doulas in health coverage

NEW YORK – Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, is expanding nationwide its health care coverage next month for employees who want to enlist the services of a doula, a person trained to assist women during pregnancies.

The coverage was first offered to Walmart employees in Georgia in 2021, and then last year the Bentonville, Arkansas-based discounter offered the same benefit to employees in Louisiana, Indiana and Illinois. The exception is Hawaii, which has its own set of health benefits, Walmart said.

Walmart said the program, which kicks off nationwide on Nov. 1, is meant to address racial inequities in health care and improve the maternal and infant health of its workers and their babies, especially in areas where access to care may be limited. Doulas are trained experts that must receive credentials from either the National Black Doulas Association or DONA International.

The expansion of the doula benefits comes as a new collection of reports from the March of Dimes, a nonprofit organization committed to ending preventable maternal health risks and death, shows that more than 5.6 million women live in counties with limited or no access to maternity care services, pushing families to find new ways to get needed care.

Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women, largely due to differences in the quality of health care, underlying chronic conditions and structural racism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Employing a doula as a part of a birthing team decreases cesarean sections by 50%, shortens the time of labor by 25% and decreases the need for other medical interventions by more than half, according to the National Black Doulas Association.