Spotlight Interview: Kian Glenn

Kiwi Cares is focused on improving maternal health in Minnesota. Our work focuses on bringing birthing people and families together to support each other and by providing monetary or other support directly to families. A lot of our projects focus on filling gaps in funding to support birthing people. Most recently we published a podcast that highlights birthing peoples’ stories in Minnesota (The Bond: Our Babies, Our Voices) – you can listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Our other projects include: 1. Strollers for Health: A stroller donation program that collects and distributes gently used strollers to families across the Twin Cities, funded by the City of Minneapolis. 2. Maternal Health Microgrants: A program designed to provide financial assistance to new parents for essential items like car seats, transportation, and childcare for medical appointments, ensuring greater access to health services. 3. Birthing People Healing Sessions: Facilitated sessions to help individuals process birth trauma, paired with referrals to behavioral health providers, funded by the Minnesota Department of Health. 4. The Bond: Our Babies, Our Voices: A podcast that highlights the experiences of Black, Native, and Latina birthing individuals. 5. Community Sustained Agriculture (CSA) Access: We provide weekly distributions of fruits and vegetables through the Good Acre CSAs, providing ongoing community and nutrition support.

When we started Strollers for Health I just wanted to facilitate stroller donations. I did not realize how many people had stories of their babies and family members getting injured due to recalled or unsafe strollers. Many people shared how their stroller was stolen because others could not afford them. My own parents had their stroller stolen when my oldest sister was born.

We rely on community partners and organizations to do the actual work. A network of doulas and nurses distributes strollers to families. We hear about gaps in funding or opportunities for future work from our partners, too. For instance, we started receiving microgrant requests for transportation to births and spontaneous deliveries. As a consultant, I had advised many states on how to design nonemergency medical transportation (NEMT) programs and prior authorization protocols, but I never considered how those policies were incongruent with spontaneous, vaginal birth. When a family does not have a car, many nurses, doulas, and birth centers end up covering the cost of the taxi out of their operating expenses, or individuals call an ambulance. We helped educate the providers on NEMT options like mileage reimbursement for neighbors, and we are trying to work with DHS to consider other NEMT policies to support families. In the meantime, we will still provide microgrant funding for taxis for spontaneous, vaginal births.

Please consider joining our board! We also have funding for CSA shares for new parents – please reach out if you would like to consider a pilot at your organization. We would also encourage you to listen to The Bond: Our Babies, Our Voices, to hear from birthing people directly and reflect on the implications of their experience on your work. We are working on provider-specific training based on our podcast recordings – please reach out if your organization would like to collaborate.

We are wrapping up the contract for a Minneapolis-specific project to create breastfeeding promotion materials for specific job categories (e.g., teachers, childcare, retail, construction, home care workers, etc.). We’ll also provide breastfeeding kits to support pumping once birthing people return to work.