Author: Fungisai Gwanzura Ottemöller
Author title: Department of Health Promotion and Education, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Norway
Description: Immigrant women in Norway have high fertility rates and are responsible for between a quarter to a third of all births. Women who have migrated as refugees or asylum seekers are at higher risk and have poorer outcomes, before, during and after birth due to the lack of knowledge about their pre-migration birth outcomes and the lack of cultural competence in the maternal health services. The ‘multicultural’ doula program was implemented to help provide equitable health services for these women. In this article, I share my journey to becoming a doula, and from my perspective and experiences as a doula and a migration researcher, I discuss the role of the ‘multicultural’ doulas and the power dynamics around how the program is run.

---