Charlotte med students expand doula support program

WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Wake Forest University School of Medicine students Colette Haynie (left) and Iyra Chandra launched a volunteer-based birth doula program for laboring patients.

While Iyra Chandra and Colette Haynie train in Charlotte to become physicians, they are providing free volunteer doula support as a service project. 

Thirty-one graduate students were selected North Carolina Albert Schweitzer Fellows for the class of 2026-27, including Chandra and Haynie, who are MD students at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Charlotte.

NC Schweitzer Fellows design and implement year-long community service projects focused on addressing gaps in healthcare access, while meeting their academic obligations. Each project is carried out in partnership with a community-based organization. Fellows pair with both community and academic mentors throughout the year, helping students continue their development as leaders and role models.

"Our primary goal is for our volunteers to serve as sources of continuous emotional support for laboring patients," Haynie said. "Doulas are uniquely positioned to serve patients in a truly muti-faceted way. We can offer hands on techniques such as counter pressure to ease labor pains, guide patients through movement and position changes, and work with their healthcare team to advocate for their needs. 

“Serving as a volunteer doula allows us to support patients and has taught me so much about what patient centered care really means. Being part of this organization in Winston Salem has been such a meaningful part of my medical school experience and we’re so excited to bring the program to Charlotte."

North Carolina’s rate of maternal mortality is higher than the national average, and the presence of birth doulas has been shown to improve maternal and infant outcomes, especially in communities of color that experience disproportionate maternal health challenges. 

To meet that need, the program will start in labor and delivery at Atrium Health Cabarrus. Medical and nursing students will be trained to be birth doula volunteers by community doulas and other healthcare professionals. The volunteers will start in the fall. 

The project is an expansion of the Deacon Doulas program in Winston-Salem, which began as an original Schweitzer Fellowship project, by Abby Peoples and Callie Ollish, that continues today at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. 

Last year, Chandra and Haynie served on the program's student leadership group in Winston-Salem. They were trained as doulas from teammates across various specialties, nurses, midwives and community doulas, and gained insight from national research studies linking continuous labor support to improving patient outcomes. 

Since moving to Charlotte for their third-year rotations, they've identified a similar community need in the area. They are now looking to explore ways that their volunteer birth doula program can provide support the women and infants in the local community. 

“This is a way to bring a similar labor support program to Charlotte,” Chandra said. “Colette and I are both passionate about improving maternal health outcomes and ensuring all patients receive compassionate, high-quality support. We also saw this as an opportunity for medical students to engage with patients earlier in their education.”

For Haynie, serving these patients is an aspiration she's had for years, inspired by her late great-grandmother, who worked as a midwife for decades, and provided labor and delivery care to African American women prior to when hospitals were integrated. 

Haynie’s initial exposure to healthcare began when she started working at a physical therapy clinic on a summer break from high school. By the time she entered college, she became a certified physical therapy technician, where she guided patients through difficult and often painful exercises to assist them in their recoveries from injuries and surgeries. This experience also encouraged her to become a doula, as she enjoyed working closely with patients toward a shared outcome. 

During college, Haynie participated in the Cultivating Opportunity and Realizing Excellence Leadership Program through Georgetown University School of Medicine, which focused on exposing pre-medical students to gaps in healthcare access and outcomes. Haynie says the stark disproportions in maternal mortality rates were something that she couldn’t ignore.

Chandra says she grew up advocating for the sexual and reproductive health of women in her family, which helped pique her interest in uplifting patient voices and providing health education to women. She advocated for an equitable gender pay gap and conducted research on community programs supporting opioid-exposed mothers and infants. 

Prior to medical school, she also worked at a free OB/GYN clinic and as a coordinator on gynecological oncology trials improving accessibility to patients that faced barriers to care. Her motivation for pursuing a medical career stemmed from wanting to support women who face health inequities and working to mitigate these disparities in the local community.

Both medical students have worked or volunteered in various healthcare settings that inspired them to help improve women's health and maternal outcomes. Their experiences becoming a doula in medical school and working directly with patients as part of a volunteer labor support program were monumental in building their own passions, career goals and learning how to be better advocates for patients facing barriers to care. 

“Doulas are associated with fewer birth complications and more positive labor experiences and the idea behind doing a birth doula volunteer program is that we're an extra set of hands that can mitigate some of these challenging moments for patients and really stand up and listen to them,” Chandra said. 

“Doulas were traditionally a private service that was not covered by insurance and was largely out of pocket, which made it inaccessible to most patients. Our goal is to be a free resource for any patient who might want someone or might be alone during the laboring process.”

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