WATSONVILLE — Salud Para La Gente’s Director of Women’s Health, Dr. Cristina Gamboa, is featured in the latest episode of “Giving Birth in America,” a documentary series by Every Mother Counts, available on CNN.com and CNNgo.
“Giving Birth in America” is a documentary series that highlights some of the challenges and solutions to providing equitable maternity care in the United States. It is created by Every Mother Counts, a nonprofit organization founded by Christy Turlington Burns which is dedicated to making childbirth safe for every mother.
“Giving Birth in America: California” follows Gamboa and one of her patients, an immigrant farmworker from Mexico, pregnant with her third child, as she progresses through pregnancy and childbirth and explores the care she receives from the team at Salud.
Gamboa, an OBGYN whose parents and grandparents were farmworkers in central California, studied medicine with the intention of serving a community similar to the one where she was raised.
“When I hear people in society say, ‘go back to Mexico,’ or ‘immigrants don’t deserve the right to healthcare or the right to work here, the right to be here,’ I take that personally … because I’m from a family of immigrants,” she said.
“We are dedicated to serving everyone,” said Dori Rose Inda, CEO of Salud. “We will continue to serve you no matter where you come from, who you love, what color your skin is, what language you speak, or how much you earn.”
In 2016, Salud established the first OBGYN 24/7 Hospitalist program in Santa Cruz County. The program has resulted in a 16 percent reduction in Cesarean Section deliveries, surpassing federal Healthy People 2020 targets (23.9 percent for Nullip Term Singleton Vertex births, meaning full-term, head-first single births to a first-time mother).
On Nov. 29, Salud Para La Gente, in collaboration with the Watsonville Film Festival, will host a screening of “Giving Birth in America: California,” at the Appleton Grill & Event Lounge, 410 Rodriguez St. in Watsonville, from 5:30-6:30 p.m. The screening will include an extended panel conversation with Gamboa and Clancy McCarty, the producer of the series.
“We are honored and excited to host this community screening and conversation with Salud Para la Gente,” said Consuelo Alba, director of the Watsonville Film Festival. “The intersection between pregnancy and immigration is very important, but as a society, we rarely talk about it.”
