The MHTF Celebrates International Women's Day!

This year, International Women’s Day is inspiring action with the theme “Make it Happen”! Every year on March 8th, organizations and people around the world turn their thoughts and efforts to women as we celebrate their strength and power and work to address the disparities and challenges they still face.

In commemoration of this day, the MHTF wants to share with you, our maternal health community, resources that will help us reflect on the tremendous impact women have on shaping health and society.

New Policy Brief

• Putting Mothers and Babies First: Integrating Policies, Programs and Services – WISH 2015 Policy Briefing by Ana Langer, Joy Riggs-Perla, Mark Steedman and Mary Nell Wegner
• From the authors: “This policy briefing aims to build a case for integrating policies, programs and services in ways that improve the quality and accessibility of care for mothers and newborns. Service integration is a key strategy to sustain the current momentum. We examine the social and health burdens caused by ineffective care, the opportunities to provide more integrated care, and the actions that various key players can take to achieve a common goal: improving the health and wellbeing of all women and newborns.”

International Women’s Day Events

• Search for International Women’s Day events in your country!
• Smart Economics: Women’s Reproductive Health presented at Women’s Health: Rewriting the Goals, Friday, March 6th at 11:25 am EST: Part of the Chicago Council for Global Affairs International Women’s Day Symposium, join with Purnima Mane from Pathfinder, Priya Agrawal from Merk for Mothers, and Jeni Klugman from Harvard Kennedy School to discuss the economic payoff and human rights imperative for investing in women’s sexual and reproductive health. Participate in Chicago or online!

Resources on Empowerment and Health

• The influence of women’s empowerment on maternal health care utilization: Evidence from Albania
• Empowerment and use of antenatal care among women in Ghana: a cross-sectional study
• Increasing literate and illiterate women’s met need for contraception via empowerment: a quasi-experiment in rural India
• Women’s Empowerment and Contraceptive Use: The Role of Independent versus Couples’ Decision-Making, from a Lower Middle Income Country Perspective
• Development of the Community Midwifery Education initiative and its influence on women’s health and empowerment in Afghanistan: a case study
• WE-MEASR: A New Tool for Measuring Women’s Empowerment in Health Programs

 Join the conversation on Twitter!

Follow @womensday, #makeithappen, #IWD2015, and #womensday on Twitter to follow and contribute to the conversation about empowering women!