Maternal and Child Health Center of Excellence
The Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Center of Excellence provides academic, research, and service-learning opportunities to public health students, researchers, and practitioners whose mission is to improve the lives of mothers, children, and families.
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Birth Beyond Bars Study
The Birth Beyond Bars Study is the first study outside of the prison nursery setting to follow children who were exposed to their mother’s incarceration in utero during a critical period for child development, from birth to age three.
Children whose mothers were pregnant during incarceration in prison or jail may have lifelong health consequences due to experiencing:
- Harm from prison and jail policies that result in poor prenatal care, inadequate nutrition, or their mother being subjected to shackling or solitary confinement during pregnancy
- Separation from their mothers at birth, denying their ability to bond with their mothers or breastfeed
- Stressful lives due to the toll their mothers’ incarceration takes on their families’ finances and physical and mental health
The Birth Beyond Bars study seeks to understand what children and their families experience and what impact those experiences have on their health and wellbeing to create better policies and programs for these families. Researchers at Harvard, working closely with Motherhood Beyond Bars and other nonprofits and government organizations, enroll children at their birth and collect detailed information about them, their caregivers, and their currently or formerly incarcerated mothers.
For more information, contact Bethany Kotlar at bkotlar@hsph.harvard.edu.
Our Team
Amy Ard
Amy has spent over 21 years directing nonprofits and small businesses. She founded and owned DC Birth Doulas, the largest doula agency in Washington D.C., before moving back to her home state of Georgia to advocate for and work directly with incarcerated pregnant women and families impacted by incarceration. She is a graduate of Denison University (BA) and Vanderbilt Divinity School (MTS). She is currently the Executive Director of Motherhood Beyond Bars.
Vanessa Garrett
Vanessa brings experience, passion, and a deep understanding of the needs of mothers and children impacted by the criminal legal system to her role. For over a decade she has worked with justice-impacted mothers and uses her experience to help women navigate the obstacles they face coming out of incarceration. She is a paralegal concentrating in criminal, business, and family law. Vanessa is fluent in Spanish and American Sign Language and is a Certified Circle of Security Parenting Facilitator. She is currently the Program Director of Motherhood Beyond Bars.
Sarah Perry
Sarah has a passion for helping others. From an early age she wanted to be a social worker with a desire to build deep, trusting relationships. Her mission is to treat justice-impacted mothers as individuals and not a number by creating personal relationships grounded in trust and mutual respect. Sarah is currently majoring in business and communications. For the past year, she has actively participated in resilience training courses to assist her families to help cope with the traumas of parental incarceration. She is currently the Program Coordinator at Motherhood Beyond Bars.
Bethany Kotlar
Bethany first began working with incarcerated pregnant and postpartum women in 2013 as a volunteer health educator teaching childbirth education and postpartum health in the Georgia Department of Corrections. These early classes grew into Motherhood Beyond Bars. Bethany has since completed a Master of Public Health (MPH) from Rollins School of Public Health and a doctorate in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Harvard University. Bethany designed and implemented the Birth Beyond Bars Study with Motherhood Beyond Bar’s staff during her doctoral program and currently manages all data collection and analysis efforts. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Henning Tiemeier
Henning is a Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Sumner and Esther Feldberg Professor of Maternal and Child Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Henning has served in an advisory capacity for the Birth Beyond Bars since its launch in 2020.
Margaret Matthews
Margaret (Meg) is a Master of Public Health student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health concentrating in maternal and child health. Originally from New York City, Meg attended Vassar College and studied neuroscience, women’s studies, and science, technology, and society (STS). Meg is analyzing Birth Beyond Bars Study data on attachment and childcare as part of her practicum.
Our Work
The Birth Beyond Bars Study is a birth cohort. We enroll eligible children as close to their birth as possible alongside their mother and any caregiver they have if their mother is still incarcerated. Starting from the first interview, we collect data from both caregivers and mothers about themselves and the child.
We collect both qualitative data, or family stories about their experiences, and quantitative data, or survey data on the health and wellbeing of mothers and caregivers and the child’s development. We interview families every three months between birth and their first birthday, twice in the child’s second year, and once when the child turns three. This allows us to understand how children develop and how families navigate mothers’ release from prison or jail.
The Birth Beyond Bars Study is covered under the Harvard Longwood Medical Area Institutional Review Board (IRB 21-1247, 20-1215).
The Birth Beyond Bars Study team believes that research should be by the people and for the people. In service of that goal, we hold the following values:
- Research should be designed in collaboration with those that have lived experience. The Birth Beyond Bars study team has worked to involve those with lived experience of incarceration in research design and analysis.
- Research should benefit the people who participate. The Birth Beyond Bars study team works with nonprofits, including Motherhood Beyond Bars, and other organizations to feed our results back immediately so they can put them to work improving programming and policies.
Moving Motherhood Beyond Bars, Harvard Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences News
From scissors, PFAS everywhere, to the effects of standardized tests, incarcerated moms, The Harvard Gazette
When women give birth in prison, how do their children fare? Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health News
Our Families
© Motherhood Beyond Bars, 2024. All rights reserved. Photos reproduced with permission. Unauthorized use or distribution is prohibited.