“Midwifery is what women want and what the world needs,” said Anneka Knutsson, Chief, Sexual and Reproductive Health Branch, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) at the Fourth Global Midwifery Symposium held at Women Deliver on June 2, 2019. More than 200 people, mostly midwives and global midwifery experts, attended the symposium titled, “Empowered Midwives, Transformed Communities.” Organized by UNFPA, the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), and World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with Jhpiego, UNICEF, Laerdal, and the Canadian Association of Midwives, the all-day symposium highlighted how the midwife-led continuity of care model and women-centered care can improve outcomes for women, their newborn, and their families. The discussion also focused on the importance of enabling environments and productive collaborations between midwives and other health professionals.

Every day 830 women around the globe die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes. Almost all of these deaths occur in the developing world, but over the past sixty years this global problem has made waves at home. While worldwide maternal mortality rates are decreasing, the rates are rising in three countries: Afghanistan, Sudan, and the United States. Between 2000 and 2014, the number of women who died in the United States from pregnancy-related causes while pregnant or within 42 days postpartum increased by almost 27 percent, from 18.8 per 100,000 deaths in 2000 to 23.8 in 2014.

It’s disturbing to see the data going in the wrong direction and it means we have to go beyond what we’ve been doing, said Terri D. Wright, Vice President of Programs and Community at the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation at a recent event on equitable prenatal care in the United States hosted by The Jennifer Bush-Lawson Foundation and the American Medical Association at Duke University in DC. “We can’t do the same things the same way and expect a different outcome,” she said. “We’ve got to do something different.”

In Six Steps Towards Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality, Sarah B. Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative, Geeta Lal, Senior Technical Advisor at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and Elizabeth Wang, Staff Intern at the Maternal Health Initiative, discuss suggested steps to prevent avoidable maternal deaths, globally.

“Globally, women face obstacles to entering, advancing in, and remaining in the workforce as a result of gender discrimination, harassment, and a lack of supportive, gender-sensitive policies.” – Healthy Women, Healthy Economies: A Look at Brazil

In Healthy Women, Healthy Economies: A Look at Brazil, Sarah B. Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative, and Elizabeth Wang, Maternal Health Initiative Intern, discuss the intersections of women’s health and well-being and their economic empowerment. The report also takes a look at current progress and remaining barriers to female participation in Brazil’s workforce.

“We recognize that what we’re talking about is a journey, but we also recognize that people have dreams for themselves and what this is about is helping them achieve those dreams,” said Ellen Starbird, Director of the Office of Population and Reproductive Health at USAID, at a recent Wilson Center event about the importance of community health systems, with a particular focus on voluntary family planning and infectious disease prevention. This two-panel event focused on how USAID’s Advancing Partners & Communities (APC) project worked together with communities and partners to strengthen health systems and to support countries on the journey to self-reliance said Starbird.

The ongoing crisis at our southern border is exacerbating another, less visible, one—the crisis in elder and childcare in the United States. With baby boomers aging and more parents of young children working outside the home, our country’s need for non-familial caregivers is skyrocketing. Carework is growing five times faster than any other sector in our economy; in fact, it is set to become the largest paid occupation in the U.S. by next year. While US citizens are not keen to take these jobs, migrants, especially women, are. But the current bottleneck—not just at the border but throughout our immigration system—is slowing down the flow of these vital workers.

Calls to action, strategy development, and multiple initiatives over the last decade have made clear how important it is to end preventable maternal and perinatal deaths. But we still don’t have a comprehensive understanding of how much saving these mothers and newborns, and preventing stillbirths will cost.