Welcome! 


I am pleased to share this second issue of Labor of Love and am happy to report we are making great progress toward reopening the CHA Birth Center for deliveries in early July! I am also delighted to announce we have set a date for our Open House: Wednesday, June 17, from 5:00 - 6:30 p.m. More information will be coming in the next issue, but please mark your calendar now and save the date. 

In the last issue, Kim Amsley-Camp, our director of midwifery and the birth center, and Doug Kress, our chief community officer, shared updates about our renovations and community outreach. In this issue I would like to build on those updates and share how the CHA Birth Center will embody CHA’s vision of Equity and Excellence for Everyone, Every Time. As the chief of obstetrics & gynecology at CHA, I am deeply committed to ensuring a high quality, equitable experience for all of our birthing patients. Many important initiatives are already underway and you will learn more about some of them in The Road to Reopening and Community Corner sections below. You will also have a chance to meet another one of our outstanding midwives, Maria Freytsis, who is based at the CHA Revere Care Center.

On behalf of Kim, Doug, and the entire CHA team, I want to thank you for your continued support of CHA and our shared commitment to advancing maternal health equity and improving access to care for underserved populations.

Tara Singh, MD

Chief, Obstetrics & Gynecology

Cambridge Health Alliance

The Road to Reopening


As we work toward reopening, we are being very thoughtful about how we will provide the highest quality, equitable care. One key initiative is a collaboration with CHA’s nationally recognized psychiatry department to offer robust, timely mental health services for pregnant and postpartum patients and patients who suffer a miscarriage. This program is unique in our area and recognizes the importance of whole-person care, including attention to cultural and social differences, moving beyond a singular focus on physical health. We also actively participate in the Perinatal Quality Improvement Network (PNQIN), which employs an equity-based approach to quality issues such as interventions for postpartum hemorrhage and timely management of hypertension. The PNQIN efforts have resulted in new internal processes and workflows that improve response times for these conditions. To complement this work, another of our performance improvement projects focuses on improving antenatal anemia, including home iron infusions, which supports patients facing transportation challenges.

We are proud that all ob/gyn team members have completed Culturally and Linguistic Sensitive (CLAS) training. Furthermore, we have implemented the TEAMBIRTH program in our hospital unit and will be extending it to the birth center when it reopens. This program improves communication throughout the birthing process and supports our diverse patient population. It puts the patient/family at the center of the care model, emphasizing respect for individual wishes and cultural preferences. In national studies, TEAMBIRTH has been shown to reduce disparities and improve the overall patient experience.

To ensure a consistently high level of care and positive patient experience, we will be using the PREM survey (Patient Reported Experience Measure) for all CHA Birth Center patients. This survey allows us to systematically gather data on patient experience and identify and address any issues discovered across patient groups.

CHA doulas come from many different cultures and communities!

Community Corner


This month’s Community Corner shines a light on the heart of our mission: serving all families in our diverse communities. The CHA Birth Center is dedicated to supporting everyone, with a special focus on underserved populations, or those facing barriers to care such as language. We believe doulas are invaluable resources for patients and are excited to share that we have expanded our doula program over the last year. Our 19 outstanding doulas come from a wide variety of countries and cultures and speak 13 languages, ensuring our birthing patients feel comfortable, respected, and understood.

Leading this remarkable team is Martine Dubuisson, a native of Haiti. Martine’s connection to the CHA Birth Center is deeply personal since she gave birth to her daughter there in 2001. She had such a wonderful experience that she now works at CHA and has been a doula for 15 years! She has a deep and profound love for assisting with all aspects of birth and helps instill that passion in her team. Martine also makes it a point to educate and engage her Haitian community about the value of midwifery and birth centers while she is out attending church and community events. 



Like Martine, all CHA doulas are deeply rooted in their communities and play an active role in educating community members about the importance of prenatal care. Several are currently teaching free childbirth classes at CHA in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. The doulas will also play an important role at our upcoming community outreach events, teaming up with midwives and community health workers to bring valuable healthcare and birthing expertise to their communities. Midwifery and Birth Center flyers in multiple languages will be available at these events for attendees to take home so they can learn more.

Meet our Midwives


This month, we are pleased to introduce Maria Freytsis, CNM, MPH. Born in Russia before the fall of communism, Maria’s family immigrated to the U.S. as Jewish refugees when she was just 8 years old. This personal history of navigating cultural differences and displacement inspired her career in nursing and a deep commitment to serving immigrant communities. 

Maria received her undergraduate degree in nursing and began working in maternal and child health at NYP Weil-Cornell Hospital, before taking a nursing position at the country’s first free-standing birth center a few years later. Inspired by working with midwives, she also felt drawn to international public health work and completed a master’s degree in public health in 2000. She spent the next eight years in New York, working part time as a nurse and part-time with community maternal and child health projects that focused on capacity building for midwives and community health workers in rural areas of Latin America and Asia. “The first baby that was born into my hands was the daughter of a village chief in a remote part of the Himalayas where I was working on a community health data collection project,” Maria said. “We were two days by land from the closest hospital.” 

Maria became a midwife in 2007 and joined CHA after 10 years in the NYC public hospital system in order to further CHA’s mission of serving diverse and underserved populations. She values the department’s team-based approach and the robust mental health support available to her patients. As a multilingual provider fluent in English, Spanish, and Russian, she connects deeply with families to ensure they feel heard and supported. She believes midwifery is essential for returning birth to a healthy, communal event guided by the birthing person’s instincts rather than an over-reliance on medical intervention.



Outside of her clinical work, Maria is a member of an artist collective in Brooklyn and splits her time between New York and Boston’s North Shore. She enjoys travel and movement, be it yoga, running, biking, or hiking, but she especially treasures time spent with her two young nephews. Her goal is to empower every patient with the resources and education needed to shape their own unique journey through pregnancy and parenthood.

Questions or comments about this newsletter? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at communications@challiance.org.