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.
677 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
Blog
-
Measuring Maternal Health in a Post-MDG World
By: Linnea Bennett, Intern, Environmental Change and Security Program, Woodrow Wilson Center As the international development community looks back on the Millennium Development Goals and ponders what remains to be…
-
Three Barriers to Delivering Maternal Health Supplies and the Solution
By: Katharine McCarthy, Research Coordinator, Population Council; Saumya Ramarao, Senior Associate, Population Council This post is part of the blog series “Increasing access to maternal and reproductive health supplies: Leveraging…
-
Event: Call the Midwife: A Conversation About The Rising Global Midwifery Movement
This Monday, March 23rd, the Wilson Center in Washington, DC will host an all-day symposium on the global importance of midwifery, supported by the MHTF and UNFPA. The event is open for all to attend, but you must RSVP! Speakers from around the world and across the maternal health community are coming together to discuss the global midwifery movement. They will highlight midwifery as a cost-effective solution towards promoting maternal and newborn health based on the latest evidence, discuss some major global midwifery initiatives underway, demonstrate innovations in the field of midwifery and discuss some interesting country experiences. The symposium hopes to further foster partnerships and synergies in midwifery and help build global commitments for scale up of midwifery. In order to review the formal invitation from The Wilson Center below with agenda and RSVP details please… read more
-
GLOW 2015 Conference Gives New Evidence for Putting Girls and Women at the Heart of the New Global Development Goals
On March 4th 2015, the annual GLOW conference was held at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) in London, jointly hosted by the MARCH Centre of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Institute for Women’s Health of University College London. Global Women’s Research society (GLOW) was created in 2012 to bring together UK-based academics to better advance research and also leadership development. The GLOW 2015 theme was “Reaching Every Women, Every Newborn: the post-2015 research agenda” and the first keynotes looked back to learn, and then looked forward… read more
-
Call for Posts: How to Increase Access to Maternal and Reproductive Health Supplies
The Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF), the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC)/Maternal Health Supplies Caucus (MHS) and Family Care International (FCI) share the goal of increasing awareness of the key role that reliable access to quality maternal and reproductive health supplies plays in reducing maternal mortality. To this end, we’d like to invite you to contribute a post to our blog series, Increasing access to maternal and reproductive health supplies: Leveraging lessons learned in preventing maternal mortality… read more
-
Maintaining the Focus on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health With Innovation and the SDGs
As we reflect on the work that we’ve accomplished through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and plan for the next set of global commitments (the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs), it’s important to talk about the inextricable link between mothers and their children. This link is both biological and social and has critical implications for health systems. With this knowledge, it is important that maternal and child health professionals work together and look at the continuum of maternal, newborn and child health in an integrated fashion, without forgetting any of these critical elements. But what is integration?… read more
-
How to Use Mobile Technology to Integrate Maternal and Newborn Health Care
When the idea of MAMA was in its infancy it was always about maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH), because we knew that they go hand in hand. If a woman’s pregnancy isn’t healthy then chances are her baby, and ultimately her growing child, won’t be either. That’s why we worked with BabyCenter and other MNCH experts to create a set of core health messages that adhere to global best practices, designing them to be sent two to three times a week to cover a woman’s pregnancy all the way through her child’s third year of life… read more
-
On the Far Reaching Consequences of Maternal Mortality
Worldwide, about 290,000 women die each year from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. From a numerical perspective, this figure appears to denote a situation less urgent than that suggested by the figures for other global health threats, such as malaria (630,000) and HIV (1.5 million). However, in the developing world—where 90 percent of maternal deaths take place—maternal mortality has dramatic implications for child survival and has a profound effect on the well-being and sustainability of the larger community… read more
-
The Challenges and Opportunities for Maternal Newborn Integration
Poor integration of maternal and newborn services during pregnancy, childbirth and in the postpartum period can have adverse consequences for the quality of care that mothers and babies receive. It can also affect the equitable access to this care, especially among poor and marginalized populations. In many countries around the world, significant challenges exist at the national, sub-national and local levels for the increase of maternal and newborn health integration. A variety of health system, financial, human resource as well as societal factors must be recognized and addressed to find the right balance of integrated service delivery… read more
-
9 Ways to Save Lives Through Maternal and Newborn Health Integration
At a standing room only event last week at The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, global experts gathered to discuss the need for, barriers to, and the way forward for maternal and newborn integration. But what is integration and why is it so desperately needed? Every year approximately 300,000 women and 5.5 million newborns, including stillborns, die needlessly. The causes of these deaths are often similar since the mother and her newborn are inextricably linked both socially and biologically… read more