This month, in honour of Black History Month, our Beyond Your Bubble series proudly welcomed two inspiring women, Tinuke Awe and Clo Abe, the founders of Five X More. Organised by our Diversity and Inclusion team, the Beyond Your Bubble initiative invites influential voices from all walks of life to share their impactful work and experiences.
Five X More is a groundbreaking organisation that advocates for Black maternal health in the UK, focusing on enhancing women’s health, reducing mortality rates for Black mothers, driving policy reform, and ensuring improvement of healthcare outcomes for Black women and birthing people. Through parliamentary lobbying and ongoing collaboration with NHS, Clo and Tinuke work to make maternal health equity a reality.
Clo and Tinuke began their talk by sharing insights into the launch of Five X More. They both first met through ‘Mums and Tea’, an online platform for connecting Black mums together to share their experiences, which was also founded by Tinuke. Through their shared passion for Improving Black Maternal Health, Five X More was founded in 2019.
They went on to highlight the key objectives of their community-focused campaign, the first one being training staff and health professionals to overcome stereotypes around Black Women which can be barriers in improving Black Maternal Health. Secondly, supporting and empowering Black women and birthing people to make informed decisions about their health and advocate for themselves throughout their pregnancies and beyond.
Thirdly, advocacy can be used as a powerful tool for visibility, especially around issues that are often overlooked or minimized. Through Five X More’s work, they aim to elevate Black maternal health as a national issue, bringing it to the forefront in Parliament and influencing NHS policy to drive systemic change. And lastly, through research and reports spread more awareness on this issue.
The session concluded with Clo and Tinuke’s powerful message: advocacy is not just about raising voices but about creating a movement that has the power to shift mindsets, influence policies, and pave the way for long-lasting equity in maternal healthcare. They emphasized the importance of community support and allyship in driving this change stating that, ‘You can’t change something you don’t know about ’.
To help support Five X More and learn more about their work, follow them on Instagram and join the movement toward improving Black maternal health in the UK.
