Category: Maternal Health

  • Kenya’s healthcare workers abuse a third of teen mums from informal settlements – study

    Kenya’s healthcare workers abuse a third of teen mums from informal settlements – study

    Anthony Idowu Ajayi, African Population and Health Research Center and Caroline W. Kabiru, African Population and Health Research Center Adolescent pregnancy is a global public health concern: in 2022, about 13% of girls and young women gave birth before the age of 18. Compared with women in their early 20s, adolescents are more susceptible to…

  • Study Shows Increase in Maternal Mortality by Race and Ethnicity Over Last 20 Years

    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.

  • New Documentaries About the Maternal Health Crisis, Sex Trafficking Coming to VOD This Year

    New Documentaries About the Maternal Health Crisis, Sex Trafficking Coming to VOD This Year

    When I want to learn more about a subject I always turn to documentaries. They provide a quick way to get the facts and crucial information about an issue I am interested in and then if I want to learn more I turn to other resources including books, news articles, research papers, and the like.…

  • Poor knowledge and practice around oxytocin could put women in Nigeria at risk during childbirth

    Poor knowledge and practice around oxytocin could put women in Nigeria at risk during childbirth

    Chioma S. Ejekam, University of Lagos and Chimezie Anyakora, Pan Atlantic University Severe bleeding after childbirth – postpartum hemorrhage – is a leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality in middle-income countries. Oxytocin is an affordable and effective drug that’s recommended to prevent postpartum hemorrhage. But there are concerns about the quality of oxytocin available…

  • World Health Leaders Change Targets to Reach 2030 Maternal Health Development Goal

    World Health Leaders Change Targets to Reach 2030 Maternal Health Development Goal

    The COVID pandemic did much to upend global health. Not only were hospitals filled to overcapacity worldwide with patients experiencing severe COVID symptoms, but entire health systems were also brought to a halt. Routine medical procedures and quality care in other areas besides COVID were preempted by the global virus. This has caused global health…

  • Donate to Help Expecting Mothers in Haiti

    Donate to Help Expecting Mothers in Haiti

    It is difficult to believe how much Haiti is suffering. Not only was its president assassinated a little over a month ago, but a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit last weekend with a death toll now of over 1400. And, if that is not enough, a tropical storm is quickly barreling its way towards the island…

  • The Universal Human Right to an Identity from Birth Explained

    The Universal Human Right to an Identity from Birth Explained

    By Caroline Kinsella, Advocacy and Communications Intern, White Ribbon Alliance  One of the more hidden human rights abuses around the world is the fact that one billion people have no legal proof of identity. Alarmingly, UNICEF estimates that about one in four children  under age 5, or 166 million, are unregistered and without any trace…

  • 5 Virtual Valentine’s Day Gifts to Help Mothers Worldwide

    5 Virtual Valentine’s Day Gifts to Help Mothers Worldwide

    This year while we are all still mostly locked down due to Covid-19, there are ways in which we can donate to the issues we care about most. For SocialGoodMoms.com, our primary issue is mothers — always has been and always will be — and there are a vast majority of ways to help moms…

  • 2021 Black Maternal Health Legislation Updated With Covid-19, Climate Change Bills #Momnibus

    2021 Black Maternal Health Legislation Updated With Covid-19, Climate Change Bills #Momnibus

    In 2020, Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) and Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC) along with then California senator Kamala Harris introduced the Black Maternal Health Momnibus, a series of nine bills that took racial disparities out of the maternal health outcomes, funded communty-based maternal health organizations, improved data collection, and invested in digital health tools among other pertinent issues.…

  • The Global HER Act Explained #ReproductiveHealth #GlobalHERAct

    The Global HER Act Explained #ReproductiveHealth #GlobalHERAct

    It was a sunny afternoon as most days are in Ethiopia in April. I was taking an individual tour of a large hospital in the middle of Addis Ababa where I got to talk to doctors, nurses, and see waiting rooms and even patients who were recovering from care. I distinctly remember the room of…

  • 4 Reasons The US Is Back on Track With Global Health

    4 Reasons The US Is Back on Track With Global Health

    As is true with each new presidential administration the global health community hangs in the balance. According to KFF.org the US global health funding was set at $11 billion in FY 2019 and in 2020 the funding was significantly decreased. This funding goes towards programs in more than 70 countries for HIV, malaria, maternal and…

  • Black Doctor Dies During Childbirth #MaternalHealth #BlackMaternalHeaLTH

    Black Doctor Dies During Childbirth #MaternalHealth #BlackMaternalHeaLTH

    I do not take pleasure in writing about black maternal health in general or specifically about black women who die either during pregnancy, giving birth, directly after birth, or even a year after having a baby. In fact, it is depressing. In this case, however, despite the other women who have died publicly during and/or…

  • CDC Launches Campaign To Raise Awareness About Pregnancy and Postpartum Warning Signs

    CDC Launches Campaign To Raise Awareness About Pregnancy and Postpartum Warning Signs

    The other day I wrote about a Youtube mom who recently gave birth to her son and then recognized that her blood pressure was too high after she was released from the hospital. She immediately visited her OBGYN and then ultimately was hospitalized due to the severity of her condition, preeclampsia. You can follow her…

  • [VIDEO] Mother Advocates for Her Own Health After Delivery And Preeclampsia #BlackMaternalHealth

    [VIDEO] Mother Advocates for Her Own Health After Delivery And Preeclampsia #BlackMaternalHealth

    A few years ago I was honored to speak at Blogher with Merck for Mothers. The panel was about maternal health outcomes globally as well as in the United States. As I have mentioned so many times on this blog, the United States leads the developing world with maternal health deaths. This number is exaccerbated…

  • The CDC Releases Newly Updated Maternal Death Statistics in Over a Decade

    The CDC Releases Newly Updated Maternal Death Statistics in Over a Decade

    United States maternal death statistics that have been used for over a decade have finally been updated. The CDC released 2018 national and state maternal death estimates last week. The numbers have increased dramatically and still remain the worst of any developed country in the world. Currently, the maternal mortality rate (MMR) is 17.4 deaths…

  • Woman Dies From Pregnancy-Related Complications After Waiting Hours in Emergency Room

    Woman Dies From Pregnancy-Related Complications After Waiting Hours in Emergency Room

    You have probably heard the story of Tashonna Ward, the 25-year-old Milwaukee woman who recently spent hours in the emergency room due to shortness of breath and died after waiting too long. Ward was told that she would spend between two to six hours in wait time at the ER according to distressing posts on…

  • Vice Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris on Successful Black Maternal Health Outcomes

    Vice Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris on Successful Black Maternal Health Outcomes

    It has been a historic week with the announcement of Kamala D. Harris as the first black woman nominee for vice president. Pundits and political experts alike will, without doubt, parse through her record from her time working as DA of San Francisco and Attorney General of California as well as serving in the United…

  • 9 Maternal Health Stories Worth Reading This Weekend

    9 Maternal Health Stories Worth Reading This Weekend

    Now that 2020 is in full swing I decided to catch up on the many maternal health and mortality articles that were published during the holiday season. There has been a lot of stellar reporting that you might have missed. I did. Here is a compilation of some of the articles I found the most…

  • 5 Things to Know About Maternal Health This Week

    5 Things to Know About Maternal Health This Week

    The CDC released a new report late last week, Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Pregnancy-Related Deaths — United States, 2007–2016, that reiterates the maternal mortality disparity between black mothers and American Indian/Alaska Native women and white, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander women. The numbers now seem worse than we originally thought. For example, black women who are college…

  • [WATCH] Video Shows Horrors of Childbirth in Sierra Leone #MaternalHealth

    The United Nations has designated Sierra Leone as the most dangerous place to have a baby. In fact, it has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world at 1,360 deaths per 100,000 live births. On average, most women have at least six babies in Sierra Leone. In a previous post I mentioned the Aminata…