In 2024, animator and director Carl Jones released “The League of Black & Unlimited Dads,” a short film reimagining Black fathers as superheroes in their communities. The project, which premiered at the American Black Film Festival, wasn’t just entertainment; it was a cultural correction.
“The media has a tendency to shine a spotlight on all the negative things that happen with Black men,” Jones told Black Love. “I think it’s a great honor to be able to do something that’s very different from that, and actually show what it means to be a superhero, or Black father.”
But while pop culture is catching up to reality, American healthcare still lags dangerously behind. Black women are dying because of it. And the people who care for them are too often treated as witnesses to a crisis rather than as partners in preventing it.
The Crisis That Demands Urgency
The statistics are devastating and pervasive. According to March of Dimes, the maternal mortality rate among Black moms was 44.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2024, compared with 14.2 among white moms. In Missouri, the Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review found that from 2018 to 2022, the pregnancy-related mortality ratio for Black women was 2.5 times the ratio of white women, and 80% of pregnancy-related deaths were preventable.
This isn’t just about access to care. Black women die at alarming rates regardless of their income, education, or insurance status. The problem is systemic: Black women’s pain is routinely dismissed, their concerns minimized, their symptoms ignored until it’s too late.
Dan Cranshaw, JD, executive director of KC Health Collaborative, said he did not fully understand the depth of the Black maternal health crisis until he began working in this space.
“I think it probably wasn’t until I took this job,” Cranshaw said.
His daughter, Camille, was born six weeks early. She weighed 3 pounds, 5 ounces, and spent about six weeks in the NICU. Her mother later experienced postpartum preeclampsia. Yet Cranshaw remembers the experience as one marked by a level of confidence many families never receive.
“We were two white-collar parents, had really good health insurance, had all the time we needed to take off,” Cranshaw said. “And there was just sort of this confidence that this was all going to work out.”
The confidence was connected to the care they received.
“We also had culturally congruent care,” Cranshaw said. “We had a Black OB-GYN. She stayed very calm, and had a really talented team that worked with us. And so there wasn’t any sort of crisis situation.”
Looking back, Cranshaw said he recognizes how easily that story could have ended differently. He credited much of that awareness to his work with the Kansas City Health Equity Learning and Action Network (The LAN).
“There wasn’t any awareness until joining this work and The LAN work and appreciating that, but for the grace of God, this would have gone in the opposite direction,” he said. “For most folks in those circumstances, it does not turn out that well.”
These aren’t anomalies. They’re the predictable outcome of a healthcare system built on centuries of racist myths about Black bodies, myths that told medical students Black people felt less pain, that Black women were inherently stronger and needed less care, that their complaints were exaggerated or attention-seeking.
And in too many delivery rooms, those myths still dictate care.
The Advocate Already in the Room
When experts discuss solutions to Black maternal mortality, the conversation typically centers on doulas, midwives, policy changes, and implicit bias training for medical providers, all of which are crucial and necessary. But another person is often already in the room: the father.
Black fathers have been fighting a different kind of dismissal for decades. The “absentee father” narrative has become so pervasive that data contradicting it barely make a dent in public consciousness, even though recent research continues to challenge that stereotype. A study published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies noted that Black fathers’ involvement is often underestimated and that prior research has found Black fathers are highly engaged in parenting through caregiving, shared meals, transportation, play, and other forms of daily support.
The stereotype persists anyway, shaping everything from family court decisions to child support policy to healthcare interactions. And when medical systems expect Black fathers to be absent, they’re certainly not equipped to engage them as advocates.
Cranshaw said the stereotype does not necessarily stop committed fathers from showing up. But it does shape how people respond when they do.
“There will be times when I am surprised at people’s surprise about how I move through the world,” he said.
When his daughter came home from college with mononucleosis, Cranshaw canceled meetings, got her to the doctor, handled the diagnosis, and started planning what she needed to recover.
“I told people why I had to leave and cancel some meetings,” Cranshaw said. “They were like, ‘Wow, look at you being a good dad.’
That reaction, he said, is part of what needs to change.
“I would flip that and say people need to recognize that there are more of us out there than we probably get credit for,” Cranshaw said.
This is where two crises intersect, and where addressing one can help solve the other.
Reframing Presence as Advocacy
Research from the Moynihan Institute for Fatherhood Research and Policy examined how Black fathers support their partners during the perinatal period. Published in the journal Child & Family Social Work, the study found that fathers wanted to be actively involved but often didn’t know what questions to ask or how forcefully to push back when something felt wrong. Programs like Dads to Doulas are also emerging to equip Black men and expectant fathers with knowledge about pregnancy, labor, and delivery so they can communicate with medical staff and advocate when their partners’ concerns are not being heard.
Cranshaw said the more he has learned about the role of doulas, the more clearly he sees how fathers and partners can support the same goal.
“In some ways, the more I understand about how doulas operate and hearing stories about the effectiveness that they bring to the table, in my mind, that’s where men and fathers can play a role,” Cranshaw said. “There is a strategic partner in the work deeply emotionally embedded in that work.”
He said fathers and partners can offer emotional connection while also helping manage information, logistics, and stress.
That presence matters before delivery, during labor, and after birth. Fathers can attend prenatal appointments, understand their partner’s medical history, help create a birth plan, and provide emotional support. More importantly, they need to be prepared to speak up, repeatedly if necessary, when something doesn’t seem right.
“It is being that strategic partner prior to delivery and appreciating the concerns and the desires that mom wants, what does she want this childbirth to look like, and being able to fight for what that’s supposed to look like,” Cranshaw said.
But advocacy also requires flexibility when medical circumstances change.
“I would also argue, having spent time with our clinical partners, it’s also recognizing that there may be times where you’ve got a bridge between the plan and reality,” Cranshaw said. “And I think being strong enough to have those sort of conversations is going to be important.”
For Cranshaw, advocacy can also mean handling the communication gaps that should not fall on the mother. When Camille was in the NICU, one nurse said Cranshaw and her mother could help bathe the baby, but a different nurse later said they could not.
“It was on me to sort of take on the charge, call up the charge nurse, have the conversation that says, ‘What’s happening here?’” Cranshaw said. “And then to make sure that there’s a free flow of information.”
That type of intervention matters because “mom doesn’t have to deal with that stuff,” he said.
What Fathers Need to Know and What Systems Must Change
Fathers can’t do this work alone, and they shouldn’t have to fight healthcare systems to be included.
Hospitals and clinics must actively welcome fathers into prenatal care, provide them with education about warning signs and advocacy strategies, and train staff to engage them as partners rather than obstacles.
Kenneth Braswell, CEO of Fathers Incorporated, argues that father involvement extends beyond the delivery room into broader family health. Supporting fathers’ health isn’t a distraction from maternal health work; it’s part of ensuring they can show up fully for their partners and children.
It doesn’t mean centering men in conversations about maternal health. Black women remain at the center of this crisis, and solutions must prioritize their voices, their needs, and their survival. But recognizing Black fathers as potential force multipliers for their partners’ safety isn’t a distraction. It’s a strategy.
Cranshaw said Black fathers belong in the conversation because they can help reduce the weight mothers are forced to carry alone.
“There is no doubt that having a thoughtful, supportive, committed partner throughout this process is going to help alleviate the physiological stress on the mother,” he said. “I think it’s going to provide some blocking for the mom as well, meaning that as opposed to having to take on all of the responsibility of taking care of herself, taking care of the baby growing inside of her and navigating a system that really isn’t built for her, having someone along to, again, fight those battles, to do the advanced work, to think strategically about where we need to be, and to find meaningful ways to either work around or work through elements of the system that don’t allow mom to be the best version of herself.”
Programs, policies, and cultural shifts matter because lives are at stake. Black fathers stepping into advocacy roles won’t fix centuries of medical racism overnight, but they can be part of a multilayered strategy to protect Black women until deeper systemic change takes hold.
Cranshaw said he hopes the next generation sees a broader understanding of what Black families deserve during pregnancy and childbirth.
“I would hope that the work that we do with The LAN and under the leadership of HealthForward President and CEO Qiana Thomason and Director of Community Impact Hayat Abdullahi is that we really create a broader understanding that Black and brown moms and families want the same thing as their white counterparts,” he said.
Poor outcomes, he said, cannot be attributed to Black and brown women themselves.
“It can only be attributed to the system and the structural biases that prevent them from having highly successful births,” Cranshaw said.
The superheroes Carl Jones imagined are already here. They’re in prenatal appointments asking questions, in delivery rooms refusing to let concerns be dismissed, in postpartum recovery making sure warning signs don’t get ignored. They’re showing up because their partners’ lives depend on it, their children need their mothers, and they refuse to accept that Black women’s deaths are inevitable.
Healthcare systems can either continue treating these men as obstacles to handle, or start seeing them as partners in the fight to keep Black women alive.
The choice should be obvious. The time is now.
