Becoming a doula is not for everyone, and our goal for this scholarship is to train up doulas who will be actively doing this work to support Medicaid beneficiaries. Before applying, please consider:

• Full-time doula work is usually considered 4 clients per month, although some doulas do extend to support 5 clients in a very busy month. Some doulas also work part-time, taking on 1 or 2 clients each month.

• Doula are on call 24/7 for their clients and need to be able to leave to attend on births at all hours and sometimes with short notice. That means you may need to leave another job or school, or miss a test, appointment, family celebration, or other important event. If you have children, you'll also need childcare available on short notice. The work requires physical stamina as births often happen overnight and are sometimes very long — 24 hours or more. You could choose to partner with another doula to reduce some of these demands (sharing call time or trading off at long births).

• Michigan Medicaid reimburses up to $1,150 per client ($75 each for up to 6 prenatal or postpartum visits, and $700 for the birth).

• Most doulas are self-employed and do Medicaid billing themselves (we'll point you in the right direction on how to do this). Some doulas work for an agency, where the agency finds clients and does the billing, in which case the agency receives the fee and pays the doula a set rate. We will provide you with support to be added to the MDHHS Doula Registry for Medicaid, but you will be responsible for accrediting with health plans and for learning how to bill or for hiring a professional biller. There are sometimes delays in being paid by a health plan. More resources are slowly becoming available to doulas to assist in this process, but we want to be clear that you'll need determination and resourcefulness to complete these next steps. We'll connect you with as many resources as we can!

• If you receive a scholarship, you must be available to attend and complete the entire training, you cannot miss any hours of the workshop.

• Each approved scholarship recipient can attend only one MDHHS-sponsored training. If you apply for trainings through multiple training organizations, know that you can only be approved for and attend ONE of those doula workshops.