Saleemah J. McNeil stands for a portrait inside the anticipated Oshun Family Center in Kensington on August 21. The center is expected to open in 2026 or 2027, according to McNeil. The center had secured $1.2 million to begin construction, but funding cuts left only $500,000. McNeil now faces the challenge of raising the difference through foundations and donors.
Photo by Aidan Gallo
In Philadelphia, the Oshun Family Center has become a lifeline for families navigating the country’s growing maternal health crisis.
Founded by Saleemah J. McNeil, a reproductive psychotherapist and longtime advocate, Oshun is one of the few Black-owned maternal and family health care centers in the Philadelphia region. Each April, the center hosts Black Maternal Health Week, shining a light on the disproportionate infant and maternal mortality rates that continue to climb across the United States.
McNeil, who earned her M.S. in Clinical Psychology from Chestnut Hill College, continues to push for systemic change while supporting families directly. As a professor, researcher, and advocate, she emphasizes that solutions require more than community care; they demand political will. For her, the mission is both professional and deeply personal. With a career spanning maternal and child health, including lactation consulting and doula work for social service agencies, McNeil has provided virtual and in-person services that prioritize holistic care for birthing people. It’s an area often overlooked by traditional health systems, including mental health, maternal, and fertility support.
Her philosophy is grounded in alarming findings from Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRCs) across the nation. In Philadelphia, between 2013 and 2018, non-Hispanic Black women represented 43% of births but 73% of pregnancy-related deaths. Nationally, Black women are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, a disparity that experts stress is largely preventable. While non-Hispanic white women are more likely to die from mental health–related causes, Black women face greater risks from cardiac conditions, embolisms, and, more recently, from COVID-19.
As a member of Pennsylvania’s MMRC, McNeil underscores that these outcomes are not isolated incidents, but the result of systemic racism and structural failures. “People do need douas and lactation consultants,” she explains. “They need birth advocates and activists to help them along the way, to also fight with those healthcare systems, unjust systems, to make sure that people are treated well.”
Despite these alarming measures, only nine states’ MMRCs currently account for racial disparities in their investigations. Pennsylvania has had its committee since 2018 — the same year McNeil founded Oshun. Her center does not replace healthcare providers but supplements them with wraparound services, from counseling to advocacy. “What would it look like if a family could walk through the door and have all of those services in one spot?” she asks.
That vision is now challenged by shifting national policy. Recent federal proposals, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), would drastically weaken Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, potentially leaving an estimated 16 million Americans without health care by 2034. Medicaid alone pays for 41% of U.S. births and covers nearly two-thirds of births to Black mothers, making proposed cuts particularly devastating for maternal health equity. In 2023, Medicaid helped deliver 274,000 breast cancer screenings and 129,100 cervical cancer screenings, programs that may now face steep reductions.
At the same time, the current administration has canceled key grants for reproductive health, breast cancer research, and even environmental studies like air pollution. These are factors that disproportionately affect maternal and infant outcomes. Earlier this year, the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), which had tracked maternal health data for 35 years, was abruptly shuttered.
Oshun has already felt the fallout. The center had secured $1.2 million to begin construction on a new Kensington facility, but funding cuts left only $500,000. McNeil now faces the challenge of raising the new shortfalls through foundations and donors. The cutbacks severely impact research and services that are needed to lower the mortality rate.
“When those funding executive orders come down the pipeline, they impact people like me,” McNeil said.
Meanwhile, new challenges loom. Climate-driven extreme heat is expected to worsen pregnancy complications like hypertension and preeclampsia, while SEPTA service cuts risk making hospital and clinic access difficult for families already struggling. Shortening and cutting routes will only make transportation harder for kids to get to school and affect caregivers getting to work, McNeil said.
“When it costs you $20 for a round trip to get your kid to school, it may be another $20 to pick them up,” she explains, adding: “Where do people have $40 a day for transportation when they used to pay maybe $5?”
Still, McNeil presses forward and remains optimistic. The Oshun Family Center is preparing for its Kensington expansion in 2026 or 2027, while raising awareness about the policies that shape maternal health every day.
“We live here,” she says. “We raise our children here. We are a part of the community. So all the things that are coming down to reshape reproductive rights and justice impact how we do our work day-to-day, and the access that people have to services that are salient like ours.”
The work ahead is clear: to raise awareness, build resilience, and ensure that women, particularly women of color, receive the consistent, quality care they deserve. McNeil says that she hopes that policymakers will recognize what’s at stake and decide to act.
“One day, somebody can walk through the door and have a joyous time or have a really hard time and get through it, but know that all of the support is here to help them through.”
