New Appointments at the Maternal Health Task Force

Anne M. Austin and Kate Mitchell are the two most recent additions to the Maternal Health Task Force team. Anne will lead the MHTF’s new research, monitoring and evaluation efforts as Deputy Director for Research, Monitoring and Evaluation, while Kate will keep the MHTF’s cutting-edge knowledge management system content-rich and timely as the Managing Editor.

Born in Indonesia to a Norwegian mother and American father, and raised in Nigeria, Kenya and Saudi Arabia, Anne Austin brings a personal and professional global perspective to the MHTF. She holds a BA from Emory University, a MPH from the Rollins School of Public Health, and a ScD from the Harvard School of Public Health’s in Global Health and Population Studies and was named a Pritzker Fellow two years in a row.

Anne has conducted extensive research in areas that make her exceptionally well-suited to lead the MHTF’s innovative implementation research agenda on the quality of maternal health care. Her technical and analytical skills will enable the MHTF to contribute significantly to the global challenge of systematizing proven interventions to improve maternal health outcomes especially in high-burden settings. Among her studies, Anne has looked at maternal and child health trends in Egypt, analyzed global policy approaches to child nutrition, analyzed couple concordance on attitudes towards abortion and knowledge of abortion, and managed a unique CDC study on the prevention of malaria in pregnancy.

Kate returns to the MHTF where she began as a Knowledge Management Assistant in the project’s first phase, cataloguing and tagging the first on-line library exclusive to maternal health as well as helping to establish and populate the MHTF’s social media platforms. She left the MHTF when she was named a Clinton Fellow at the America India Foundation. Over the course of year, she worked in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand and Kolkata in West Bengal investigating the implementation of the Janani Suraksha Yojana conditional cash transfer program. She also designed and facilitated workshops for community health workers on community involvement in maternal and newborn health programs. Kate runs her own maternal health blog and is a frequent contributor to others. She holds a BA from Florida International University and an MPH from Boston University School of Public Health.

The MHTF is pleased to welcome Anne Austin, and to welcome back Kate Mitchell to the team! To learn more about Anne, Kate and the rest of the MHTF staff, click here.