Call for Papers: Maternal Health is Women’s Health
We are delighted to announce the theme for year 2 of our Maternal Health Collection, a partnership between PLOS and the Maternal Health Task Force at Harvard School of Public Health.
We invite papers (both research and commentary) on the theme of “maternal health is women’s health,” which recognizes the vital importance to the MNCH agenda of the health of women over the whole of their lives:
While pregnancy is limited to women of reproductive age, maternal health is influenced by the health of women and girls before pregnancy, and it also influences women’s health broadly during and after the reproductive years. Inability to access quality health care and family planning resources, low educational attainment, low socioeconomic status, restrictive gender roles, poor nutrition, and a host of other social and biological factors combine to put girls and women at risk for not being able to attain and sustain the health status they deserve throughout their lives.
Papers submitted by 1 April 2013 stand the best chance of being included in this Collection. Our call for papers is broad, but specific priorities for this year’s Collection are:
- Maternal health as part of sexual and reproductive health issues (e.g., family planning, gender-based violence, STIs)
- Maternal health and non-communicable diseases (e.g., cardiovascular disease, mental health)
- Maternal health and communicable diseases (e.g., malaria, HIV/AIDS)
- Implications of child and adolescent health for maternal health
- Consequences of poor maternal health in later stages of women’s lives (e.g., prolapse and other chronic morbidities)
More information can be found in our editorial and at the Maternal Health Collection page.
Stay tuned for exciting news about the official Launch of our Year 1 Collection on “quality of maternal health care.”