Reimagining Birth Through Design
Please join us for an evening exploring how thoughtful design of spaces, systems, tools, and lived experiences can transform pregnancy, labor, and postpartum care.
Reimagining Birth Through Design brings together leaders in health, innovation, and human-centered design to examine how creativity and collaboration can foster more supportive, equitable, and empowering birth experiences for families and providers alike.
The evening will begin with an interactive Educational Expo and networking session, followed by presentations from Kim Holden and Deb Polzin-Rosenberg, who will share insights from their work at the intersection of maternal health and design innovation. The program will conclude with a discussion on Maine’s maternal health crisis and emerging mitigation strategies, facilitated by Shaw Innovation Fellow Emily Battye (Nursing ’26).
We invite attendees to consider how creativity and collaboration can lead to more supportive, equitable, and empowering birth experiences for families and providers alike. Together, we will highlight available resources, spotlight promising solutions, and explore innovative, culturally responsive, and evidence-based approaches to care in Maine and beyond.
About Kim: "I am an architect, doula, lactation counselor, design consultant, and educator. My focus is the intersection of design and birth and the impact that environment has on experiences, outcomes, disparities, and mortality, during the entire perinatal period.
Prior to founding Doula x Design, I was a Founder and the Managing Principal at SHoP, an internationally renowned architecture firm based in NYC, for over 20 years, and was the William Henry Bishop Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University for the 2023-2024 academic year, teaching a graduate level studio on spaces of birth.
I am DONA (Doulas of North America) trained, a Certified Advanced Birth Doula (CABD), and a Certified Lactation Counselor (CLC). I am fluent in Spinning Babies® labor comfort and progress techniques and a Professional Member of Evidence Based Birth® receiving frequent continuing education on the best practices in the field. I am on the Board of Directors of The Birthing Place Foundation, co-founder of the Mobilize Maternal Health Coalition, and a member of the New York State Birth Center Association and the American Association of Birth Centers.
I am a registered architect (RA) in the State of New York and a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). I have participated in architectural juries at several universities including Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Art Institute of Chicago, Berkeley, and University of Maine, and lectured at University of Toronto, Wentworth Institute of Technology, and Boston Architectural College. In addition, I serve on the Advisory Board of Madame Architect, an online magazine celebrating the extraordinary women who shape our world, as well as the AIA Maine Program Committee, and am Vice President of the Architalx Board.
Beyond my passion for birth and design, I enjoy my lifelong engagement in ballet and photography. I am a mother of two daughters, birthed in New York City with the unwavering support of my midwife, Yael, and my doula, Amy."
About Deb: "I began my career training to be a midwife, but the sterile labor and delivery rooms, chaotic nursing stations and incessant beeping and chiming of the hospital environment left me deeply dissatisfied with the typical U.S. birth experience—that seemed to approach even low-risk birth like an acute myocardial infarction. In fact, the Labor & Delivery unit bore a striking resemblance to an ICU. I practiced as a registered nurse (RN) for many years in women’s health until I decided to tackle birth as a design problem instead, earning a Master’s of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). At RISD, I was awarded a travel grant to research the design of birth spaces in England and The Netherlands.
In 2015, I joined social impact architecture firm MASS, where my work focused on the intersection of design and healthcare, especially around childbirth. MASS offered me the opportunity to work from their flagship East Africa office in Rwanda, so in 2016, I packed up my family and moved to Kigali. For two years, I worked on a diverse portfolio of healthcare and birth-specific architectural projects in East Africa, including innovative maternity units for two Ministry of Health District Hospitals and a Postnatal Unit for a community health center in Malawi. I have researched and designed healthcare in both the Global South and Global North and found that despite the enormous disparity in resources, there are important lessons to be learned from both.
There is considerable variation in the design of childbirth spaces—from panopticon floorplans that maximize visual surveillance (a design borrowed from prison architecture) to a boutique birth hotel to an outdoor labor labyrinth. Within the U.S., few guidelines exist for the design of these life-altering spaces and little research addresses what works and what does not. In conversations with clinical staff and administrators, I have heard many times that facilities rarely share design successes or failures and teams charged with leading renovations feel as though they are starting from scratch. The result is that design trends without proven efficacy are perpetuated in the built environment at great expense and potential harm to patients.
Too little is known about the impact that design decisions have on birth outcomes. We do know that some important outcomes vary wildly by facility. A 2013 study found that, even after adjusting for maternal socio-demographic and clinical factors, it appears that a woman’s greatest risk factor for cesarean delivery is actually the facility where she gives birth, with cesarean rates varying between 7 and 70% of births among U.S. hospitals.* Clearly, many factors are at play in the care that women receive during childbirth; the question is how design of the facility contributes to the policies, pressures and clinical decisions that are made in the course of her birth."