PURPOSE:
In the current sociopolitical environment, reproductive justice and health equity research are deeply under attack, limiting funds and resources. The US research community faces significant challenges in promoting perinatal health equity. There is a tremendous need to build and scaffold communities that will enable us to advance research despite a constrained financial and sociopolitical environment. Our aim is to accelerate collaborations, write together on manuscripts, and generate research partnerships in an environment of collective care and mutuality.

DISCUSSION:
We created an equity-centered space for researchers to gather during a 2 day research, writing, and re-imagining symposium, designed with principles of radical hospitality. We created event activities with lateral power-sharing and group communication. We invited diverse researchers who were reproductive justice experts from across our university and early to mid career perinatal health researchers and practitioners from across the country, prioritizing those from politically conservative states with whom we hoped to grow, strengthen, and deepen relationships. We organized according to perinatal health interest areas to develop affinity teams that spent two days in conversation and writing. We dedicated our time together building relationships, trust, and a vision for future collaborations in an environment of collective care and mutuality.

EVIDENCE WHERE RELEVANT:
Researchers who participated felt energized and supported in their research, and shared that they had never been in a similar academic space. We are launching a perinatal Special Issue of Health Equity journal to leverage our collective voices calling for a more just and equitable future. We are still learning how to sustain a virtual community in perinatal health research and reproductive justice, moving forward as the threats persist.

KEY MESSAGE:
Despite tremendous threats and challenges to advancing perinatal health equity, through intentional and radical hospitality, perinatal health researchers can create an environment of collective care and mutuality and advance perinatal health equity research. Labour and birth - evidence