Quality of Maternal Health Care – Maternal Health Task Force

Developing Maternity Care to Reverse Patterns of Violence and Inequality in West Papua

November 13, 2023

By: Els Tieneke Rieke Katmo, PhD, Lecturer in Social Agribusiness, University of Papua. Els is a gender studies scholar with a doctorate from Flinders University, Australia and an MA from the University of Indonesia.; Jenny Munro, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Queensland. Jenny is a medical anthropologist who works in Indonesia and the Pacific Islands.

Challenging the reliance on facility-based childbirth to prevent maternal mortality in low and middle-income countries

April 26, 2022April 26, 2022

By: Bethany Kotlar, MPH, Associate Directer of the Maternal Health Task Force

BOLDly Redefining High Quality Care During Labor and Delivery

January 2, 2018January 2, 2018

By: Sarah Hodin, MPH, CD(DONA), LCCE, National Senior Manager of Maternal Newborn Health Programs, Steward Health Care

The International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics recently published a special supplement highlighting findings and lessons learned from implementing the World Health Organization’s Better Outcome in Labor Difficulty (BOLD) project in Nigeria and Uganda…read more

Improving Quality of Care is the Most Powerful Means to End Preventable Maternal Deaths

December 28, 2017January 2, 2018

By: Pompy Sridhar, India Director, MSD for Mothers

In recent years, considerable efforts to improve the quality of institutional care during the antenatal, delivery and postpartum periods have favored public health care facilities, largely excluding private ones. This has been the case despite the fact that private providers in India account for up to 30% of institutional deliveries in rural areas and up to 52.5% of institutional deliveries in urban areas…read more

Upcoming Webinar: Cesarean Section Safety and Quality in Low-Resource Settings

November 7, 2017November 7, 2017

By: Sarah Hodin, MPH, CD(DONA), LCCE, National Senior Manager of Maternal Newborn Health Programs, Steward Health Care

While the volume of cesarean sections in low- and middle-income countries has increased steadily in recent years, many of these procedures are being provided in settings that do not meet minimum standards of safety and quality. On Thursday, 9 November at 9:30AM ET, the Fistula Care Plus Project will be hosting a webinar titled, “Cesarean Section Safety and Quality in Low-Resource Settings: Highlights from a Global Technical Consultation”…read more

Reflections on Women-Centered Health Care Then and Now

October 30, 2017October 30, 2017

By: Jeffrey Smith, Vice President of Technical Leadership, Jhpiego

Jeffrey Smith, Vice President of Technical Leadership at Jhpiego, reflects on his experiences working to ensure high quality, women-centered care, including current efforts to implement a group antenatal care model in Kenya and Nigeria…read more

The Struggle to Provide Culturally-Appropriate Maternity Care

September 28, 2017October 6, 2017

By: Sarah Hodin, MPH, CD(DONA), LCCE, National Senior Manager of Maternal Newborn Health Programs, Steward Health Care

How have program implementers, clinicians and researchers approached the issue of providing culturally-appropriate maternity care, and what challenges have they encountered? A recent paper in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth aimed to answer these questions…read more

Adapting the Safe Childbirth Checklist to Reduce Stillbirths and Neonatal Deaths in India

September 15, 2017September 15, 2017

By: Sarah Hodin, MPH, CD(DONA), LCCE, National Senior Manager of Maternal Newborn Health Programs, Steward Health Care

In August 2017, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health hosted a seminar featuring Beena Varghese, Senior Health Economist at the Public Health Foundation of India, who presented findings from a study she led in Rajasthan, India to examine the impact of an adapted version of the World Health Organization Safe Childbirth Checklist on rates of stillbirth and very early neonatal deaths…read more

A Little Respect: Improving Maternity Care

September 5, 2017September 7, 2017

By: Yuval Cohen, Intern, Maternal Health Initiative, Woodrow Wilson Center

In a webinar hosted by the Maternal Health Task Force and Ariadne Labs, speakers discussed the importance of respectful maternity care (RMC) and strategies for integrating RMC principles into quality improvement initiatives globally…read more

New Guidelines for Preventing and Treating Malaria in Pregnancy

July 25, 2017July 26, 2017

By: Sarah Hodin, MPH, CD(DONA), LCCE, National Senior Manager of Maternal Newborn Health Programs, Steward Health Care

Addressing the issue of malaria in pregnancy (MiP) is a key component of providing high quality antenatal care (ANC), particularly in endemic areas. A group of experts recently published a brief with guidelines for preventing and treating MiP in the context of the updated ANC recommendations from the World Health Organization…read more