STEPHANIE WILBORN (she/her)
Oakland, CA
SUMMARY
A local Bay Area educator and early childhood policy researcher with 8+ years of direct classroom and nonprofit experience serving low income, immigrant, and families of color across the Bay Area. A recent UC Berkeley GSPP MPA graduate, training in maternal health, food policy, and family support systems. Seeking to bring lived classroom expertise and policy fluency to the Head Start Board.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Directed Community Education & Training programming at the Oakland LGBTQ+ Center following an internal promotion from Youth Programs Manager, expanding services for youth and families across the East Bay. • Conducted MPA capstone and coursework research connecting maternal health, food policy, and Medi-Cal/Medicaid access to early childhood developmental outcomes for families of color. • Researched OUSD school closures and educational segregation using data mapping and literature review, analyzing effects on ELA/Math outcomes across West and East Oakland. • 8+ years of direct service to children ages 0–8 and their families, spanning homeless preschool education, TK/Kindergarten instruction, and nonprofit youth development. • National Early Childhood Policy Fellow and member of the ACES Graduate Learning Community at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Director, Community Engagement & Training | Oakland LGBTQ+ Center Aug 2023 – Jul 2025 Promoted internally from Youth Programs Manager after one year to lead and rebuild the Center's community engagement and training function.
• Developed and managed a comprehensive training and education program serving diverse range participants annually, overseeing the full program lifecycle from needs assessment and curriculum design through implementation, evaluation, and funder reporting. Working extensively with Oakland’s Department of Violence, Alameda Health Alliance, OUSD, and local parents and families.
• Built and sustained relationships with 100+ partner organizations. Such as schools, nonprofits, public agencies, and healthcare providers ensuring collaborations remained responsive to community needs while meeting organizational goals. Reestablished relationships with over 20+ expired MOU and relationships. Increasing funding with collaborative structure models.
• Designed and facilitated leadership development opportunities for youth interns, emerging professionals, and community members, providing mentorship, coaching, and pathways to workforce and civic engagement opportunities within the community.
• Created and administered pre/post assessments. Tracked, entered, and analyzed participant data to support program evaluation, grant compliance, and impact storytelling reflecting the true needs of the communities. • Supervised youth interns, developing individual growth plans, connecting interns to professional resources, and tracking development outcomes. Impacting over 25+ youth. • Supported grant proposal development and maintained accountability to funder deliverables, scopes of work, and reporting requirements.
Youth Programs Manager | Pacific Center Jul 2022 – Aug 2023 Managed youth programming with a focus on whole child development and family engagement, laying the groundwork for the partnership-driven approach later scaled as Director.
• Managed youth serving programs with a focus on LGBTQ+ young people navigating mental health, identity development, and community connection within BUSD.
• Coordinated multi stakeholder programming with teachers, local organizers and school administrators., Managed over 20 partner relationships, tracked outcomes, and produced reports for organizational leadership and funders. • Increased Black, Indigenous and Latine youth participation within BUSD, with a focus on building more inclusive curriculum and programming.
• Increased youth participation by 25% with new youth programming focused on expansive identities and parent support groups.
• Facilitated convenings and group learning experiences rooted in healing centered, equity focused pedagogy.
School Coordinator | LYRIC Jul 2020 – Jun 2021
Coordinated school-based programming supporting LGBTQ+ youth development and educational readiness. • Coordinated school based programs connecting LGBTQ+ youth to educational support and community resources during a period of significant remote learning disruption.
Community & Education Director | ACT Aug 2017 – Jul 2020 • Coordinated 30+ community engagement initiatives across San Francisco, bringing A.C.T.’s arts and civic education work into sustained relationship with communities across Bayview Hunters Point, the Tenderloin, and Chinatown • Designed and facilitated the Citizen Artist Program, preparing 30+ MFA students to become culturally responsive teaching artists and community leaders across the Bay Area. • Managed all dimensions of convening design and execution. Such as outreach, logistics, facilitator coordination, participant support, and outcome tracking. Connecting 500+ residents across events averaging 70 attendees per event.
• Lead designer and curated for all community based events, focused on equity and accessibility to the arts. Including Every 28 Hours a Black Arts Festival, behind the scenes opportunities, writing workshops and acting coaching all free to the community. Increased engagement by 40% with a diverse audience. • Synthesized community listening data into reports and storytelling materials shared with institutional leadership, board members, and funders.
• Managed partnerships with neighborhood organizations, community leaders, and arts education collaborators.
Maintained detailed relationship records and communications across diverse stakeholder groups.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
• Public school classroom teacher (Multiple Subject Credential), San Francisco Unified School District and Bay Area districts.
• Preschool, Transitional Kindergarten, and Kindergarten Instructional Aide, SFUSD. • Preschool Teacher for children experiencing homelessness, Southern California — early career role grounding her practice in compassion and transformative, healing-centered teaching. • Implemented whole-child, family-involved teaching practices, ensuring guardians were active partners in their child's education, and used project-based learning to build student curiosity and confidence. • Extensive curriculum design experience in early childhood ELA and bilingual literacy standards, with a focus on outcomes as students transition into first grade.
POLICY RESEARCH & SCHOLARSHIP
• MPA Capstone and coursework research (Goldman School of Public Policy): connected maternal and child health, food policy, Medi-Cal/Medicaid access, and family support systems to early childhood developmental outcomes. • Co-presented research on the history of school meal policy, foregrounding the Black Panther Party's free breakfast program and its influence on federal nutrition policy, and its connection to long-term child health and learning outcomes.
• Researched and analyzed education policies affecting LGBTQ+ students, producing a policy memorandum that evaluated implementation challenges and proposed evidence based recommendations to advance equity and student well being and protection within CA schools.
• Authored a policy memo arguing that California's early learning legislation (AB 130, AB 675, SB 341, SB 411) must be treated as an integrated system rather than siloed policies, recommending CDE administrative action as the implementation pathway.
• Conducted research on OUSD school closures and educational segregation, applying an economics-of-education lens and data mapping to analyze systemic effects on ELA/Math outcomes across West and East Oakland. • Researched youth mental health policy and its connections to early childhood development, including how a child's sense of dignity forms well before formal schooling begins.
EDUCATION
Master of Public Affairs (MPA), Early Learning Science & Child Policy Certificate, UC Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy — Berkeley, CA 2025 – 2026
• National Early Childhood Policy Fellow; ACES Graduate Learning Community Multiple Subject Teaching Credential, San Francisco — California 2022 Bachelors of Fine Arts, Acting, CSU, Fullerton—2015
*Please See Writing Sample Below*
To: California Department of Health Care Services, Director Michelle Baass From: Stephanie Rae Wilborn, GSPP MPA Candidate
Subject: Investing Before Birth: Expanding Community Based Doula Care Policy Recommendation
Executive Summary
Despite California's investment in prenatal care through Medi-Cal, the Comprehensive Perinatal Services Program (CPSP), and the California Prenatal Screening Program, access remains deeply unequal. Families of color, immigrant families, families living in poverty, and families in rural areas continue to face disproportionate barriers to adequate prenatal care, and 7% of the state is considered a maternity care desert. The result is that inequity and injustice for many California children take root long before they ever set foot in a classroom. We tend to tie student success solely to what happens once young people enter school, but that's a misconception. The truth is roots of inequity begin at the moment of conception. When maternal health and the wellbeing of the pregnant person go unaddressed, the effects ripple into a child's early development, shaping outcomes long before any school based intervention has a chance to help.
Through analysis of multiple policy alternatives, this memo finds that maintaining current trends would allow preventable harm to continue, while isolated changes would fail to address the full scope of the problem. The most promising solution combines two key strategies: a Doula Reimbursement and Community-Based Training Partnership Program and the integration of prenatal equity metrics into Medi-Cal's existing allocation and provider standards. First, raising Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for doula services and expanding community based training pipelines would build a sustainable, culturally responsive workforce able to reach the families who are currently least served. Second, embedding equity metrics into how Medi-Cal allocates funding and credentials providers would ensure that investment reaches rural counties and historically underserved communities rather than flowing to the regions best positioned to access it.
Doulas are uniquely positioned to provide care that reflects the specific cultural, linguistic, and lived realities of the communities they serve in a way the broader healthcare system often does not. Many doulas come from the same neighborhoods, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and life experiences as the families they support, which allows them to understand needs that a system built around standardized clinical protocols can easily overlook. From language and communication style to culturally specific beliefs around birth, postpartum recovery, and family involvement. This matters because trust in the healthcare system is not evenly distributed. For many communities of color and low income families, that mistrust is rooted in a long history of being dismissed, mistreated, or harmed by the very institutions meant to care for them, and it does not disappear simply because a policy mandates equitable care on paper. A doula serves as a bridge between a birthing person's lived experience and a healthcare system that was not designed with their specific needs in mind. Translating beyond just language, but context, advocating in the room when a patient's concerns risk being minimized, and creating a sense of safety that allows families to actually receive the care they're entitled to. In this way, doulas go beyond offering supplement clinical care. They restore a layer of trust and cultural understanding that the system has too often failed to build on its own.
Together, these strategies would improve maternal and infant health outcomes, reduce costly preterm births and C-sections, and generate meaningful savings for a Medi-Cal program currently under severe fiscal strain. By centering culturally grounded, community based care, California can close prenatal equity gaps before they become educational and economic ones. Giving every child the chance to begin life, and eventually school, healthy and supported.
Introduction/Problem Statement
Across the country, schools are being asked to do more than just teach. Teachers are often treated as parents, siblings, counselors, and even social workers, while administrators are pulled in every direction.
Raising academic outcomes, responding to students’ basic needs, supporting staff, and managing tight budgets. Too often, schools are expected to solve problems that begin far outside their walls, and the frustration that results leaves administrators isolated and resistant to change. At the heart of every school are its students, yet families are left out of the conversation about student achievement.
These pressures fall hardest on schools serving low income students and communities of color, where the inequities outside the classroom run deepest. When these challenges go unaddressed, schools are left in a permanent state of catch up, and students absorb the cost in achievement, opportunity, and long term success. If schools are to succeed, California needs to look at the broader systems that support children and families and that is starting with strengthening prenatal support through community based doulas who provide care that is culturally grounded and responsive to the families they serve.
According to the CDC, the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) indicates that 13.7% of children are experiencing poverty, a number that continues to climb. When a family’s basic needs such as housing, health care, food, income go unmet, the effects on a child’s development begin well before that child ever sets foot in a school building. These systems operate in silos and are rarely connected to schools or student success, and because of that disconnect, the achievement gap widens while the students most affected continue to fall behind.
A Call to Action
The education system is stretched to a breaking point, continually expected to address the full spectrum of societal challenges facing children and families (Labaree 1). Many children experience chronic stress without the buffer of a caring adult, producing biological adaptations that compromise brain development and long term health (Smith & Pollak 75). More than half of all U.S. children will experience at least one serious adverse event before adulthood (McLaughlin & Sheridan 2), meaning that inequities rooted in housing, health care, prenatal care, and child care are already undermining learning long before kindergarten.
When children enter school already carrying the weight of poverty, chronic stress, environmental toxins, and unmet basic needs, the system is structured for inequitable outcomes from the start (Ellis et al. 565).
The evidence, beginning with the Coleman Report (1966) and reaffirmed across decades of subsequent research, shows that without addressing the broader conditions shaping childhood, reforms confined to school buildings will have limited reach. Decades later, Hanushek (2016) reaffirmed that family remains the strongest single influence on student achievement, while teacher quality and school effectiveness continue to matter at the margins. A finding that illustrates how layered this problem is, and how much it requires solutions that operate both inside and well beyond the school building.
Figure 1. CDC Childhood Poverty Rates, 2009–2023. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Supplemental Poverty Measure.
California does provide prenatal care through Medi-Cal, the Comprehensive Perinatal Services Program (CPSP), and the California Prenatal Screening Program, but access is not equal. While 84.5% of pregnant people in California receive some form of prenatal care, 9.6% report inadequate care, and 7% of the state is considered a maternity care desert. In 2023, about 1 in 10 infants (9.6% of live births) were born to a person receiving inadequate prenatal care in California (March of Dimes & CDPH).
Families of color, immigrant families, families living in poverty, and those in rural areas face the highest barriers, creating preventable inequities for children before they even start school. Research shows that community based, culturally responsive prenatal care can significantly improve birth outcomes and reduce downstream health and educational disparities. Yet without decisive state action, the families who need this care most will continue to be the ones least able to access it.
Policy Alternatives
The policy alternatives listed below propose different strategies for addressing the prenatal care gaps facing California families and, by extension, the children whose development is shaped by them.
1. Let Present Trends Continue (LPTC): If current patterns are allowed to persist, California will continue to fall short of equitable prenatal care access despite existing programs like CPSP and the California Prenatal Screening Program. Families of color, immigrant families, families in poverty, and rural families will continue to face the highest barriers to adequate care. Medi-Cal will continue reimbursing doula services at levels too low to sustain a robust workforce, and community-based training pipelines will remain underdeveloped. As a result, preterm births, low birthweight births, and maternal stress will remain elevated in the communities that already carry the heaviest burden, and the developmental disadvantages that begin at conception will continue to compound by the time children reach kindergarten.
2. Doula Reimbursement and Community Based Training Partnership Program: This program would raise Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for doula services and expand community based training pipelines in partnership with nonprofit doula organizations such as HealthConnect One. Training pathways would prioritize recruiting doulas from the same communities they serve, ensuring care that is culturally grounded and responsive to families’ needs. Because California already reimburses doula services under Medi-Cal, this is a feasible next step that builds on existing infrastructure rather than creating a new program from scratch.
3. Family & Community Prenatal Engagement Initiative: This alternative would establish community based prenatal education roundtables for expectant families, paired with the formation of community advisory boards that include doulas, parents, and local health workers to help shape county- level Medi-Cal outreach and implementation. This approach would build trust between families and the health system, particularly in immigrant and rural communities where awareness of available CPSP and doula benefits is currently low.
4. Integrate Prenatal Equity Metrics into Medi-Cal Allocation and Provider Standards (Recommended, paired with Alternative 2): Rather than leaving doula reimbursement increases to operate in isolation, this strategy would require the Department of Health Care Services to tie funding allocation and provider network adequacy standards to equity metrics. This would prioritize maternity care deserts, rural counties, and historically underserved communities. This would ensure that new investment in doula care actually reaches the families with the highest need, rather than flowing disproportionately to regions with existing infrastructure and administrative capacity.
Criteria for Evaluation
To guide decision making, the following alternatives are analyzed through the lens of these core values:
• Effectiveness: Demonstrated through measurable improvement in maternal and infant health outcomes, including increased breastfeeding initiation, reduced preterm and low-birthweight births, lower C-section rates, and reduced maternal stress. It should also reflect improved reach into maternity care deserts and historically underserved communities. • Financial Feasibility: The policy should be affordable and sustainable given Medi-Cal's current fiscal pressure, which recently required a $3.4 billion loan to keep payments on track (CalMatters, 2025). It should leverage existing reimbursement infrastructure rather than requiring new statewide systems, and ideally generate downstream cost savings through reduced preterm births and hospital stays.
• Political Feasibility: The policy should build on California's existing Medi-Cal doula reimbursement authority rather than requiring new legislation, positioning it to gain support from the Department of Health Care Services, community-based organizations, and doula nonprofits.
Engaging families and county health departments early can help build broader support and reduce resistance.
Table 1 – Projected Matrix of Policy Outcomes
Policy Option Overall Effectiveness Overall Financial
Feasibility
Overall Political
Feasibility
LPTC Low: Allows preventable
harm to continue and
leaves families without
adequate care.
Low: No additional
funding required, but
ongoing costs from
preterm births and poor
maternal outcomes persist.
Low: Maintains current
systems without requiring
significant change, but
leaves the state's equity
promise unmet.
Doula Reimbursement
& Training Partnership
Program
High: Builds a sustainable,
culturally responsive
doula workforce,
improving birth outcomes
and reducing maternal
stress.
Moderate: Builds on
existing Medi-Cal
reimbursement authority,
but requires increased
rates and training
investment.
Low/Moderate: May face
budget resistance given
Medi-Cal's fiscal strain,
but doula nonprofits are
likely to support it.
Family & Community
Prenatal Engagement
Initiative
High: Builds trust and
awareness, particularly in
immigrant and rural
communities currently
underserved.
Moderate: Can be hosted
in partnership with CBOs
to share costs, but needs
dedicated funding for
compensation and
outreach.
High: Involving families
and community advisory
boards builds broader
community trust and
support.
Integrate Prenatal
Equity Metrics into
Medi-Cal Allocation
High: Ensures new
investment reaches
maternity care deserts and
underserved communities
rather than well-resourced
regions.
Moderate: Requires an
equity-allocation
framework for existing
reimbursement funds; no
major new appropriation
needed.
Moderate: Within DHCS's
existing administrative
authority, though may face
resistance from better
resourced provider
networks.
Anticipated Results Across Alternatives
Alternative 1: Let Present Trends Continue
Effectiveness: Low
• Families in maternity care deserts and underserved communities remain underserved by existing prenatal programs.
• High rates of inadequate prenatal care, preterm birth, and maternal stress continue without intervention.
• No improvement in doula workforce capacity or reimbursement rates. • Developmental disadvantages rooted in inadequate prenatal care continue to compound by the time children reach school.
Financial Feasibility: Low. Maintains the status quo without addressing equitable barriers. While no immediate additional funding is required, the state will continue to face significant ongoing costs related to preterm births, low-birthweight infants, and extended hospital stays — placing long-term financial strain on Medi-Cal and families alike.
Political Feasibility: Low
• No legislative or administrative changes required, making it politically easy to maintain. • Avoids upfront political or budget controversy in the short term. • However, continuing this path leaves California's stated equity commitments unmet and leaves the state vulnerable to the rising costs of poor maternal health outcomes. • Misses the opportunity to strengthen community trust between underserved families and the health care system.
Alternative 2: Doula Reimbursement and Community-Based Training Partnership Program Effectiveness: High
• Builds a sustainable, culturally competent doula workforce drawn from the communities it serves.
• Increases breastfeeding initiation and duration and improves birth outcomes by lowering preterm and low-birthweight births.
• Reduces maternal stress through consistent emotional and informational support. • Reduces C-section rates and improves maternal and infant health overall. • Generates meaningful cost savings : an estimated $58.4 million annually in averted hospital stays and roughly 3,288 averted preterm births each year.
Equity: High
• Centers the culturally specific needs of communities of color and families living in poverty. • Helps close care gaps in underserved and rural communities when paired with targeted training pipelines.
• Builds workforce capacity that reflects the lived experience of the communities being served.
Political Feasibility: Low/Moderate
• May face resistance given Medi-Cal's current $3.4 billion budget shortfall and the state's broader fiscal pressure.
• Builds on California's existing Medi-Cal doula reimbursement authority, strengthening its legal and institutional foundation.
• Doula nonprofits and community-based organizations are likely to support and help facilitate implementation.
Recommendation
We recommend that the Department of Health Care Services establish a Doula Reimbursement and Community Based Training Partnership Program in collaboration with nonprofit doula organizations such as HealthConnect One. This initiative would provide targeted support through:
• Increased Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for doula services, recognizing the full scope of prenatal, birth, and postpartum support doulas provide. • Expanded community-based training pipelines that recruit and train doulas from the communities they serve, ensuring culturally responsive care.
• Partnerships with nonprofit doula organizations to provide ongoing mentorship, resources, and quality assurance support for new doulas.
• Ongoing support structures, such as regional advisory boards, to ensure the program remains responsive to the needs of rural counties and underserved communities.
Additionally, the recommendation integrates prenatal equity metrics throughout Medi-Cal's funding allocation and provider network adequacy standards as a complementary policy measure. This approach would prioritize maternity care deserts, rural counties, and historically underserved communities when distributing new doula investment, ensuring that funding reaches the families who need it most rather than the regions best positioned to access it. Tying investment to equity metrics is what makes the reimbursement increase meaningful rather than merely available.
This program would improve maternal and infant health outcomes, reduce costly hospital stays, and generate downstream savings for a Medi-Cal program currently facing severe budget pressure. It would also support California's stated commitment to health equity while giving every child, regardless of where they are born, a healthier start, setting the foundation for stronger learning, higher achievement, and fairer opportunity across their entire educational journey.
References
“Distribution of Prenatal Care Adequacy Categories: California, 2023.” March of Dimes | PeriStats, https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/data?top=5&lev=1&stop=33®=99&sreg=06&obj=3&slev=4.
Accessed 21 Sept. 2025.
Ellis, Bruce J., et al. “Beyond Risk and Protective Factors: An Adaptation-Based Approach to Resilience.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 12, no. 4, July 2017, pp. 561–87. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617693054.
Hanushek, Eric A. “What Matters for Student Achievement.” Education Next, 13 Jan. 2016, https://www.educationnext.org/what-matters-for-student-achievement/.
Health, Department of Public. California Department of Public Health. https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CFH/DGDS. Accessed 21 Sept. 2025.
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Kozhimannil, Katy B., et al. “Modeling the Cost Effectiveness of Doula Care Associated with Reductions in Preterm Birth and Cesarean Delivery.” Birth (Berkeley, Calif.), vol. 43, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 20–27. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.1111/birt.12218.
La, Lynn. “CA Borrows $3.4B to Cover Medi-Cal Budget Gap.” CalMatters, 14 Mar. 2025. WhatMatters. calmatters.org, https://calmatters.org/newsletter/medi-cal-budget-gap-newsletter/.
Labaree, David F. Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling. Harvard University Press, 2010.
Lemon, Lara S., et al. “Quantifying the Association between Doula Care and Maternal and Neonatal Outcomes.” American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, vol. 232, no. 4, Apr. 2025, p. 387.e1-387.e43. www.ajog.org, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajog.2024.08.029.
McLaughlin, Katie A., and Margaret A. Sheridan. “Beyond Cumulative Risk: A Dimensional Approach to Childhood Adversity.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 25, no. 4, Aug. 2016, pp. 239–45.
DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721416655883.
Smith, Karen E., and Seth D. Pollak. “Rethinking Concepts and Categories for Understanding the Neurodevelopmental Effects of Childhood Adversity.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 16, no. 1, Jan. 2021, pp. 67–93. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620920725.
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Team, HC One Communications. A Quick Look at Doulas and Preterm Birth Rates — HealthConnect One. 15 Nov. 2024, https://healthconnectone.org/a-quick-look-at-doulas-and-preterm-birth-rates/.