Archive: 2018

Any woman can develop preeclampsia after delivery, whether she experienced high blood pressure during pregnancy or not. Because the majority of deaths due to preeclampsia happen after the baby is born, it is critical that patients are advised to continue…

Research in high-income countries has shown that compared to the traditional one-on-one model of antenatal care (ANC), group ANC can offer positive health outcomes. To address the evidence gap in low-resource settings, researchers recently developed a…

To end preventable maternal deaths and other persistent global development challenges, we need to work on implementing known solutions that are based on research and proven facts...read more

Research suggests that kangaroo mother care (KMC) can significantly reduce deaths in newborns as well as the risk of hypothermia and severe illness. Furthermore, it can lead to improved growth, breastfeeding practices and mother–child bonding. A recent…

Kangaroo mother care involves prolonged continuous skin-to-skin contact between a mother or her surrogate and her preterm or low birth weight infant. For stable preterm infants, this low-cost, high-impact intervention has been shown to offer better…

Interested in a position in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child or adolescent health? Every month, the Maternal Health Task Force rounds up job and internship postings from around the globe. This month, we are featuring positions with Save the…

A critical absence from the recent “cesarean section debate” has been the long-term health impact of excessively high c-section rates—including increased risk of miscarriage, unexplained stillbirth, placenta previa, placenta accreta and abruption in…

The Maternal Health Task Force recently had the pleasure of interviewing Saraswathi Vedam, Principal Investigator, Birth Place Lab, and Associate Professor, Division of Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia about her innovative…

There is a dearth of mental health screening tools validated for use in low-resource settings among pregnant women, specifically in Africa. To address this research gap, a study recently published in PLOS ONE by Heyningen et al. examined the reliability…

The term perinatal mental health is generally used to refer to the mental health of women during pregnancy and in the postpartum period, but paternal perinatal mental health may also have a large impact on the health and wellbeing of mothers and…