Who are the women shaping pregnancy and postpartum narratives? What are their experiences and insights? How can those experiences and insights help inform policies and practices moving forward? The Voices|Voces Initiative aimed to answer these questions and bring women's voices directly into discussions of health insurance priorities, strategies, and decision-making.
The performance elevates women's voices and demonstrates the importance of including diverse groups of people and consumers in shaping responsive and inclusive health care systems and services. Achieving equitable health care requires diverse voices in the discussions and decision-making processes that ultimately define policies and programs.
We recorded the Voices|Voces performance and created a series of video and print learning tools to make this invaluable material available to different audiences to generate and facilitate discussions about core issues, including equity and justice, as practiced (or not) within and among systems of care.
The research that formed the genesis of these materials was conceptualized and supervised by Ana López - De Fede, PhD, Research Professor & Associate Director of the Institute for Families in Society in the College of Social Work (COSW) at USC. Under Dr. López - DeFede’s leadership, IFS provided financial support for this research-based theatrical performance and the final development into an online series of learning materials.
Deborah Billings, PhD, Faculty Affiliate and Researcher with IFS, led the original research and a multidisciplinary, multilingual team that made this work possible, as part of a contract partially funded by the SC Department of Health and Human Services.
Alyssa Robillard, PhD, Faculty Affiliate with IFS at USC, and Associate Professor at Edson College, Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Arizona State University conducted interviews and collaborated on analysis and dissemination of Voices|Voces findings.
Chloe Rodriguez Ramos, MPH, Research Associate/Policy Analyst with IFS at USC, conducted interviews and collaborated on analysis and dissemination of Voices|Voces findings.
Patti Walker, MFA, Senior Instructor, Speech Communication & Rhetoric, Department of English Language and Literature (College of Arts and Sciences) at USC, adapted the Voices|Voces content to create and direct the Voices|Voces performance.