The Black Women’s Health Collaborative aims to provide health and wellness services to “Black women and non-men” at UC Santa Barbara. It is the first organization of its kind within the University of California system.

With UCSB being the only UC campus with a BWHC, Jackson hopes that other universities and colleges will be inspired by their work to start their own collaborative. Courtesy of Black Women’s Health Collaborative

The group became an official Associated Students entity in 2020. After operating for several years, the student leaders of the Black Women’s Health Collaborative (BWHC) reflected on their work and look forward to future initiatives. 

Second-year economics major and BWHC Internal Needs Advocate Fatoumata Kere attributes the creation of the BWHC in 2020 to a response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the founders’ desire to give “Black women and non-men” a safe space. 

“There was a lot of tension between the Black community, between men and women. A lot of Black women didn’t feel safe, so that’s why this entire organization was created, to create a safe space for Black women and non-men to be in,” Kere said. 

Second-year history of public policy and law major and BWHC Sex Positive Health Director Kaitlin Lewis echoes Kere’s notion that the BWHC provides an important safe space for “Black women and non-men.” According to Lewis, more mainstream Black organizations often fail to provide “Black women and non-men” with safe spaces, especially for queer Black women. 

“The BWHC was founded to be a space for Black women, but specifically queer Black women, because spaces like the Black Student Union are very male-dominated. They didn’t really have space for Black women, especially women of queer identities,” Lewis said. “I feel like Blackness is queerness in itself. Being Black, you’re already othered; that is a form of queerness, so it’s important to emphasize that within our mission, especially if [in] other Black organizations it’s not talked about.”

In its fifth year in A.S., the BWHC is seeing its highest event turnout rates, according to Co-Chair of BWHC and second-year Black studies and history of public policy and law double major Kamaya Jackson. Last November, the Black Beauty Expo — where students could get free Black hair and body care products — was its most popular event, with 111 attendees. Jackson stressed the difficulty in finding Black hair care products in the Santa Barbara area. She said the inaccessibility can create added stress for Black students, which she hopes to ameliorate with events like the Expo. 

“Hair is a very big aspect in the Black community, especially for me. I take care of my hair a lot, I really want my hair to look good. So in a place like this, it’s really hard for people who have the same feelings about their hair, hair anxiety and hair depression to find those resources here,” Jackson said. “The Expo is to let people with different hair textures come and get products that they won’t normally get in Santa Barbara.” 

Lewis said the organization hopes to expand on the efforts of the Expo by working with the Crown Collective, a pop-up beauty supply business on campus that sells Black hair care products and promotes local hair services. She hopes to build a cabinet that can hold hair and body care products in the Office of Black Student Development for students to pick up anytime.

The BWHC receives A.S. funding which is used for the Collaborative’s own events, but also allocated to fund many other Black student organizations and projects. Kere said the Collaborative is happy to help aid Black students at UCSB in their passions.  

“The Office of Black Student Development have fellowship students that get a budget to do their own project for the year, and we’ve been helping them with funding for that, so there are people who are doing music composition, they’re doing different clubs, it’s really cool we get help fund their project,” Kere said. 

5% of the UCSB student population is Black, which Lewis said stresses the importance of having the BWHC to make sure that Black students have the support and resources they need to thrive. 

“In my community, it is common for us to go to college, but it’s harder for us to stay there and actually graduate. It’s important we have communities like BWHC or other Black organizations where we build community and see people like us. We kind of push each other to keep going and stay; we have a reason to stay. We have a reason to keep going. We don’t really feel isolated or othered,” Lewis said. 

With UCSB being the only University of California (UC) campus with an organization that shares BWHC’s main objectives, Jackson hopes that other universities and colleges will be inspired by their work to start their own collaborative. 

“I really hope that our legacy at UCSB, Black Women’s Health Collaborative can expand to other UCs. And I honestly think it’s already in people’s minds. I just think we’re waiting on that couple of students to take the initiative to actually follow through with it,” Jackson said. 

A version of this article appeared on p. 9 of the Mar. 6, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.