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What Do We Need to Leave in 2025?
2025 has been intense! What do you hope is left behind?
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The Most Dangerous Place to Give Birth in the World and Four Ways You Can Help
Despite decades of progress in global health, pregnancy and childbirth remain life-threatening events for millions of women, especially in the world’s most fragile settings.
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Gates Highlights the Rise in Child Deaths Amid Global Health Cuts
Today, the Gates Foundation released its annual Goalkeepers report that tracks the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals. This year’s report, We Can’t Stop at Almost, highlights the growing number of child deaths given the recent cuts to global health funding.
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We’ll Always Need the Toilet: The Importance of World Toilet Day
Today on this World Toilet Day we are reminded of the 3.4 billion people who still do not have access to safe toilets. Toilets are a human right.
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Essential Tools for Locating Food Pantries Near You
Finding local food pantries and free food assistance during this time of decreased SNAP benefits is critical for families. Key web sites and apps are below including how they work, why they’re useful, and tips for using them effectively. Day by day, we are hearing information about the release of SNAP benefits. Earlier this week,…
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How the Funding Crisis Affects Maternal and Child Health
The Partnership for Maternal Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) recently conducted a snap survey of 20 of its partners to measure the deleterious effects of the funding crisis on global health programs. As expected, the decrease in funding has caused the immediate closure of health programs in lower-and-middle income countries. There is also a severe…
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Speaking to SayItForward.org about the Birth of Social Good Moms and What’s Next
I was honored to speak with Sharon D’agostino. She is the founder of Say It Forward and co-host of The Power of Stories Podcast along with Yodit Kifle Smith. We discussed how Social Good Moms started and what’s next for the site and community. I also discussed the importance of women using their voice for…
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The Devil Is Busy (HBO Max) Review
HBO Max’s short documentary The Devil Is Busy, produced by Soledad O’Brien (SO’B) Productions and co-directed by Christalyn Hampton and Geeta Gandbhir, is a searing portrait of what it means to provide and seek reproductive health care in the post-Roe era. At its center is Tracii, a staff member at Atlanta’s Feminist Women’s Health Center—now…
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Understanding the America First Global Health Strategy
The Trump administration, through the State Department, released its America First Global Health Strategy. This strategy has been long-awaited. The US global health community saw mass firings and the abrupt dismantling of USAID earlier this year.
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Signs & Symptoms of Gynecological Cancer: What to Watch For
Gynecological cancer is a broad term for cancers that begin in a woman’s reproductive organs. These cancers start in the pelvis—the area below the stomach and between the hip bones.
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When You Start Knowing Women Who Have Passed Away After Childbirth
A few years ago a family member died unexpectedly after childbirth. Her passing completely wrecked her family and they still have not recovered from her loss. And recently I learned of the recent passing of another mother who died immediately after childbirth. She was a community activist and focused her efforts on maternal health issues.…
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Arizona’s Now-Repealed Abortion Ban Serves As a Cautionary Tale For Reproductive Health Care Across the US
When the Arizona Supreme Court ruled on April 9, 2024, that the state’s Civil War-era law banning nearly all abortions was enforceable, it brought into stark reality the potential impacts of leaving reproductive rights up to the states to regulate, and the related consequences for women’s health.
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Breaking: Supreme Court Ruling Allows Mifepristone to Stay on the Market
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that FDA-approved mifepristone can stay on the market. That is, mifepristone can still be prescribed by physicians and accessed by telehealth and mail-order. The Court stayed the lower courts’ decision to ban the use of the pill stating that the plaintiffs lack standing. We recognize that many citizens, including…
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Pending Reproductive Health Decisions on the Supreme Court Docket
Supreme Court decisions are expected this month about legal doctor and mail-order prescriptions of the FDA-approved abortion pill, mifepristone, as well as whether health practitioners can provide pregnant patients with stabilizing emergency services such as an abortion where appropriate and essential for stabilization or survival.
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Baylor University Conducts In-Person, Virtual Training to Save Mothers, Babies
Baylor College of Medicine has performed substantive work in The Gambia to instruct frontline health workers on maternal and child health through its “Training of Trainers” and GOALL (Gambian Obstetrics Anesthesia Learning and Leadership) programs. With the ninth-highest maternal mortality rate, access to quality health care for women of reproductive age in The Gambia is…
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The Right to Contraception Up for Vote in Senate
In light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Senate Democrats advanced the Right to Contraception Act today to create federal legislation to guarantee contraceptive rights nationwide for women. The bill will need 60 votes today to officially begin work on the bill. “Today, we live in a country where not only tens of millions…
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Study Shows Increase in Maternal Mortality by Race and Ethnicity Over Last 20 Years
Another recent study, Trends in State-Level Maternal Mortality by Racial and Ethnic Group in the United States published in JAMA, has provided data showing that maternal health outcomes in the United States are worsening despite state and national interventions to decrease maternal mortality.
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Review: Documentary ‘In Her Hands’ Tells Story of Afghanistan’s Youngest Female Mayor, Leaves Holes About Her Life
After watching In Her Hands, a Netflix documentary executive produced by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and about Zarifa Ghafari, Afghanistan’s youngest female mayor of Maidan Wardak, I immediately started Googling what I consider major holes in her story such as what did she do before she became a mayor in 2018? Where is she today…
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Nonprofit Works to Eradicate Poverty Through Business, Not Charity
I have had the pleasure of reporting from low-income countries in east Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean many times and have seen a multitude of poverty eradication efforts from organizations that are created by social entrepreneurs to those that are funded by foundations, corporations and countries’ developmental aid. No matter the organizations’ efforts, there are…
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Saving lives with medical oxygen in Kenya
For Sandra Karimi, a nurse at Wangige Hospital in Kenya, treating patients during the COVID-19 pandemic felt like working in a war zone.