Maternal Health Task Force
The Maternal Health Task Force strives to create a strong, well-informed and collaborative community of individuals focused on ending preventable maternal mortality and morbidity worldwide.
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Blog
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20 New Jobs in Maternal Health
Interested in a position in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child or adolescent health? Every month, the Maternal Health Task Force rounds up job and internship postings from around the globe. This month, we are featuring jobs at Population Services International, Pathfinder International, the World Health Organization and more!…read more
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Implementing a Clinical Quality Dashboard in Low-Resource Maternal and Child Health Hospital
Clinical quality dashboards equip hospitals with a simple method for maintaining and monitoring clinical quality. Learn about the importance of measurement and evaluation in a health care setting, the process of creating a clinical quality dashboard in a low-resource maternity hospital and lessons learned during the creation, implementation and evaluation of the dashboard…read more
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Putting The Lancet Maternal Health Series Into Action: Five Next Steps
Last week, experts in maternal health convened at the Wilson Center to mark the recent launch of The Lancet Maternal Health Series, discuss its implications and brainstorm how to translate findings into improvements for global maternal newborn health. The speakers called for five actions to ensure high quality care for every woman, every newborn, everywhere…read more
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The Lancet Maternal Health Series: “The Scale, Scope, Coverage, and Capability of Childbirth Care”
The Lancet Maternal Health Series published in September 2016 contains six papers highlighting the importance of improving access to high quality maternal health care for all women across the globe. In paper 3, “The scale, scope, coverage, and capability of childbirth care,” Campbell and colleagues examine the adequacy of global intrapartum care with a particular focus on who helps women deliver and where those deliveries take place. They also recommend strategies for improving access to high quality maternal health care…read more
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The Global and National Maternal Mortality Targets for the Sustainable Development Goals
There has been some confusion recently about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets for reducing maternal mortality. The SDG global target is to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio (MMR) to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030. In addition to this global target, there are separate country-level targets: The primary national target is that every country should reduce its MMR by at least two-thirds from 2010 baseline levels by 2030. The secondary target, which applies to countries with the highest maternal mortality burdens, is that no country should have an MMR greater than 140 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030…read more
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Trust Black Women: Reproductive Justice in the United States and Around the World
The Women and Health Initiative and the Women, Gender, and Health interdisciplinary concentration at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health hosted a seminar featuring Monica Simpson, Executive Director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Though Monica’s talk focused on reproductive justice in United States, the issues she discussed are indeed global ones. Disrespect and abuse during childbirth, for example, has been documented around the world. Women in rural areas cannot access maternity care because they live too far away from a health facility; and even if they manage to get to a facility, they may deliver without electricity, safe water and the resources necessary to manage obstetric emergencies. Additionally, millions of women around the world have an unmet need for family planning…read more
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Global Leaders in Maternal and Newborn Health: Dr. Eshetu Bekele Yimenu (Ethiopia)
Dr. Eshetu Bekele Yimenu is a young leader working at Save the Children International as Director of Research and Uptake leading the Research, Child Rights Governance and Campaigns Department in Ethiopia. In the latest post in the Global Leaders in Maternal and Newborn Health Series, Eshetu discusses how we can work together to reduce poverty and address maternal and child health issues in the global South…read more
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Global Handwashing Day: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Maternal Health
This past Saturday was Global Handwashing Day, an event dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of handwashing for preventing diseases and saving lives. One of the Sustainable Development Goals is to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, reflecting the growing prioritization of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). The implications of WASH for the health of mothers around the world are enormous: approximately 10-15% of global maternal deaths are due to infection caused by poor hygiene practices. Explore resources illustrating how WASH plays a critical role in improving maternal health outcomes during pregnancy, delivery and postpartum…read more
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Wilson Center Event: What Next? Putting The Lancet Maternal Health Series Into Action
We are excited to announce the upcoming policy dialogue, “What Next? Putting The Lancet Maternal Health Series Into Action.” The event will take place at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. (and online!) on Friday, October 28, 2016…read more
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Celebrating One Year Since the 2015 Global Maternal Newborn Health Conference
Exactly one year has passed since the 2015 Global Maternal Newborn Health Conference, an event organized by the Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF) in collaboration with USAID’s flagship Maternal and Child Survival Program, Saving Newborn Lives at Save the Children and other partners. Researchers, policymakers, funders, implementers and other stakeholders from around the world gathered in Mexico City to share new evidence, identify knowledge and implementation gaps, build inter-disciplinary consensus and discuss strategies for integrating and improving global maternal newborn health…read more
