Abide Women’s Health Services

What they do

Abide Women’s Health Services is a maternal health organization founded in 2017 by doula and childbirth educator Cessilye Smith that centers the experiences of Black women and welcomes all clients.

“I learned about the devastating disparities in Black infant and maternal health outcomes as a doula,” says Cessilye. “This work we do at Abide came from knowing that these disparities are happening and that they are preventable.”

According to Cessilye, the organization is named Abide because it is easily translatable between English and Spanish, meaning to “dwell,” “remain,” “be present,” and to “be held and kept.”

“We set out to approach health care with a great deal of cultural humility and tenderness that centers Black women, not to the exclusion of anyone else.”
By centering the most marginalized in health care, Cessilye believes they can improve the standard of care for everyone.

In 2018, Abide became a federally recognized nonprofit, providing holistic, culturally relevant prenatal and postnatal care. The Abide clinic, soft-launched in October 2020, operates on the JJ Way® Model, a patient-centered model of care shown to reduce disparities in infant and maternal health outcomes. Abide has had zero infant maternal deaths, and their preterm birth rates and low birth weights are less than half the national average and lower than the county average.*

Abide prides itself as a community-based organization—not just community-placed. The team at Abide is intentional about ensuring clients have resources and has reverse-engineered the conventional health care model by starting with social work and addressing social determinants of health before anything else.

This approach ensures clients decide what they want and need.

“Options, options, options; access, access, access,” says Cessilye.

Why we invested

Mission Driven Finance partnered with the Elevance Health Foundation (known as Wellpoint Foundation in Texas) to make an impact investment in Abide, the second from this partnership.

Referred to Mission Driven Finance by Orchid Capital Collective, the capital from this investment allows Abide to move forward with its plan of opening a birth center and providing continuity of care for its clients. The birth center will be the first of its kind in the southern sector of Dallas (“south of 30”) and the greater DFW Metroplex that specifically centers the experiences of Black women and is led and operated by Black women and midwives.

Having secured a property for the birth center, the funding allows them to start their renovation plans immediately.

“Without the funding, we wouldn’t have been able to start our plans immediately versus having to wait until the capital campaign has reached a goal,” shares Abide board chair Dr. Trissi Gray. “This allows us to move forward when so many other nonprofits can’t because funding is so limited in the space right now.”

The investment also helps Abide expand its revenue streams, making the organization more sustainable and less dependent on grants.

*Data retrieved February 2025 from March of Dimes; 2023 Dallas County final natality data courtesy of the National Center for Health Statistics.

Disclosure: The experiences of Abide Women’s Health Services, a borrower, are shared above. No compensation was provided in connection with the experiences shared.