Ines (Augie) Rigual, AvdCD/BDT(DONA)
Director of Global Development
Augie is an Advanced DONA Doula and has been certified with DONA International for 15 years, having also worked in the Certification Committee for DONA International. She implemented and supervised a community doula program in Osceola County, Florida, for six years through a grant from the Ounce of Prevention Fund of Florida, having achieved the goal of reducing the C-section rate 14% during the first two years in two hospitals in the county. Through this community doula program, the doulas provided childbirth education and doula services to the inmates at the Osceola County Jail as well.
Became a Birth Doula Trainer in 2013 and have been offering trainings mostly in Puerto Rico, where two of the hospitals have already trained most of their Labor & Delivery nurses in an effort to reduce the hospital’s C-section rates. These hospital trainings have included doctors who have been educated on what a doula truly is and understand the work of the doula. She has trained in the Dominican Republic where an OB doctor became trained as is now a DONA Doula trainer for their country. Augie has been offering DONA Birth Doula trainings in Spanish in other states that have big Spanish communities like Utah and North Carolina. This past summer, she had the opportunity to offer the Lactation and Birth Doula trainings to a group of Mexican women who were participating in the Wholistic Maternal and Newborn Health Community Program in Los Angeles, CA.
As a Lamaze Childbirth Educator for the past 18 years, Augie offers childbirth education classes in English and Spanish for two County Health Departments in Florida on a weekly basis.
In 2010 Augie became certified as an IBCLC and recertified in 2015. She established the CAFÉ Postpartum Group at Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies and this program carried through to the Osceola County Department of Health, where the group still meets every Wednesday morning. The CAFÉ offers not only lactation support but postpartum support in general and has become the place where moms feel they can help other moms and feel good about themselves. CAFÉ stands for Compassion, Apoyo (Support), Faith, and Education.
Augie is the Programs Specialist for the Healthy Start Coalition of Osceola County.