Dr. Heather Skanes Opened a Birth Center Where Black Families Are Heard

Let me tell you about Dr. Heather Skanes.

There’s an OB/GYN who came home to Birmingham and opened Alabama’s first freestanding birth center — in a majority-Black neighborhood, in a state with one of the worst maternal and infant mortality records in the country. Her name is Dr. Heather Skanes, and she decided her hometown deserved better.

The Work

Dr. Skanes is an obstetrician-gynecologist and the CEO of Oasis Women’s Health in Birmingham, Alabama. In 2022, she founded and opened the Oasis Family Birthing Center — the first freestanding birth center in the state.

The idea was straightforward and radical: give families a real alternative to a hospital birth, offering midwifery care alongside medical care, in a place designed to feel safe. She planted it deliberately in a majority-Black neighborhood, because that’s where the need was sharpest.

Alabama has long struggled with maternal and infant mortality — and those rates fall hardest on Black women and babies. Dr. Skanes built her center to change that math.

The Roots

She earned her M.D. from Wright State University’s Boonshoft School of Medicine in 2015, then completed her OB/GYN residency at Morehouse School of Medicine and Grady Memorial Hospital from 2015 to 2019. She went on to serve as an assistant professor at the University of Alabama before launching Oasis Women’s Health in 2021.

Her whole path bends toward one goal: better outcomes for women whose care has historically been an afterthought.

Why You Should Know Her

Here’s why Dr. Heather Skanes matters right now: freestanding birth centers are under growing financial and regulatory pressure across the country, even as maternity-care deserts spread. She opened one anyway — in the state that needed it most — and she’s still there, fighting for it.

She didn’t just diagnose the problem. She built a door and held it open.

Quick facts:

• Founder, Oasis Family Birthing Center (Birmingham, AL)
• CEO, Oasis Women’s Health, LLC
• Opened Alabama’s first freestanding birth center (2022)
• Morehouse School of Medicine / Grady Memorial (residency)
• Wright State Boonshoft School of Medicine (M.D., 2015)

Photo courtesy of Oasis Women’s Health / Heather Skanes, MD (oasiswh.org)