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The Maternal Health Task Force has a mandate to advance maternal health by supporting and collaborating with leading institutions in the field, as well as with those working in allied fields. To this end, the MHTF provides support for projects that fall under three thematic areas: EVIDENCE, PROGRAMS, and POLICY.
Below are descriptions of selected projects supported to date.
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Maternal Health Content of the DHS Core Questionnaires The Futures Institute April 15, 2009 – June 20, 2009
The MHTF hosted a 13-day online forum to gather a coordinated set of comments and recommendations for the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) core questionnaires for the current round of surveys. The Futures Institute provided background material for the forum as well as ongoing forum monitoring and facilitation. After the forum closed, the Futures Institute summarized the comments and recommendations consulted with the MHTF, and sent the information to the DHS for review. The newly revised DHS core questionnaires are available here.
Systems for Evidence-based Guidance on Maternal and Perinatal Health The University of North Carolina September 1, 2009 – March 31, 2010
The MHTF is supporting a collaborative project between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the World Health Organization. The project will take the first steps in establishing a science-driven system for continuously updated guidance on evidence-based practices in maternal and perinatal health. The system will include identifying gaps in evidence, generating research and funding for filling those gaps, and detailing the evidence to provide up-to-date recommendations. A “family” of researchers, practitioners, donors, and implementing agencies will be assembled to participate in and oversee the process. Two expert group meetings will be held to develop a detailed strategy for creating and maintaining the new guidance system.
Global Voices for Maternal Health Oxford University November 1, 2009 – September 1, 2011
With support from the MHTF, researchers at the Nuffield Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at Oxford University will conduct an online ‘crowd sourcing’ exercise among 10,000 maternal health stakeholders in developing countries to document barriers to implementing safe, effective, and affordable interventions and to identify potential solutions. To identify the barriers, the researchers will prepare and widely distribute a short paper summarizing the most effective interventions of the five most important causes of severe maternal morbidity and mortality (eclampsia/pre-eclampsia; post-partum hemorrhage; obstructed labor, unsafe termination of pregnancy and sepsis.) Subsequently, they will conduct an online survey over four months with specific closed questions asking why these interventions are not being implemented, and soliciting solutions. Those solutions will be vetted by the MHTF and other maternal health experts and re-circulated to the “crowd” as well as other policy makers and programmers working to improve maternal health.
Mapping of Knowledge Resources in Maternal health The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health August 15, 2009 – October 31, 2009
Under its three-year strategic framework, the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health is building a state-of-the-art knowledge management system for the maternal-newborn-child health continuum, and the MHTF is supporting the mapping of knowledge resources for the maternal health component. Conducted by Management Sciences for Health (MSH), the comprehensive map will be the result of extensive electronic searches, focus group analyses, email surveys, and individual interviews. MSH will also provide recommendations on creating a knowledge management system that responds to the needs of relevant stakeholders. The Partnership and the MHTF will integrate this information into their knowledge management systems to ensure maximum value to users.
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Integrating Maternal Health Supplies into the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition Population Action International Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition September 1, 2009 – February 28, 2010
The MHTF is working with Population Action International (PAI) to apply the lessons learned from the reproductive health supplies movement to the maternal health field, in order to ensure that women throughout the world have access to all the reproductive and maternal health supplies they need. PAI is facilitating the inclusion and engagement of maternal health groups as active members of the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition, promoting the adoption of maternal health supplies as a priority issue of the RHSC, and promoting the adoption of the supply issue into maternal health organizations’ technical and advocacy priorities. The two critical outputs from this project will be: 1) a report of three country case studies that highlights supplies needed beyond contraceptives, 2) a fact sheet, checklist, or toolkit on maternal health supplies that can be used with policy makers and partners.
Click here for Roy Jacobstein's blog post that presents his observations on the "Linking Reproductive and Maternal Health Supplies" meeting at PAI held in December.
Mapping Maternal Health Organizations in Six Priority Countries Women Deliver September 15, 2009 – November 30, 2009
By tapping their network of over 8000 members and stakeholders, Women Deliver is mapping organizations working on maternal health in 6 priority countries; India, Bolivia, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Peru. The interactive map will reside on the MHTF website where users will be able to provide more details about each organization, add new organizations, and download existing information for a variety of uses. Eventually, the MHTF will expand this mapping exercise to cover the 68 high-burden countries identified by Countdown to 2015 so that users and observers can easily learn who is working on various aspects of maternal health, where they are located, and where there are gaps in maternal health services.
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Promoting the Minimum Initial Services Package for Reproductive Health in Disaster Risk Reduction Women's Refugee Commission November 1, 2009 – November 30, 2010
With the documented increase in natural disasters as a result of climate change, international policy makers have turned their attention to creating disaster risk reduction and emergency preparedness policies. However, interventions in post-disaster relief efforts notoriously neglect women’s reproductive health. With funding from the MHTF, the Women's Refugee Commission (WRC) will: 1) advocate for global policies on disaster risk reduction that include maternal and reproductive healthcare and; 2) work at the country-level with government ministries and first responders to design disaster risk reduction plans that include activities known to reduce maternal mortality and promote access and quality reproductive healthcare. Using their expert Minimum Initial Services Package for Reproductive Health in Disaster Risk Reduction, WRC will meet with and provide technical assistance to key global and regional disaster risk reduction and natural disaster policy-making bodies, focusing their technical assistance and training efforts in northern Uganda and southern Sudan where the needs are greatest and where WRC has already established relationships with country officials.
The Maternal Health Policy Dialogue Series The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars United Nations Population Fund November 1, 2009 – October 31, 2010
In partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the MHTF is supporting the Maternal Health Policy Dialogue Series at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. The series is covering a range of new and neglected maternal health issues, with a strategic focus on linkages to other development sectors such as transportation, gender equity, religion, and economic development. Tapping expertise from around the world, especially from experts working in developing countries, the series is being conducted in Washington and webcast live. Audiences for these dialogues at the Woodrow Wilson Center usually comprise senior-level policy makers and civil servants from the US Government and from foreign consuls and missions located in Washington DC. The series will incorporate a variety of multimedia and outreach tools to both engage and reach practitioners, policy makers, academics, and other audiences in the United States and around the world.
The Maternal Mortality Campaign White Ribbon Alliance April 1, 2009 – December 31, 2009
The White Ribbon Alliance's Global Patron, Sarah Brown, leads a global Maternal Mortality Campaign with the support of a wide range of actors within the maternal health community. With general support from the MHTF and others, the Maternal Mortality Campaign aims to establish and deliver an advocacy drive that will contribute to significantly increasing funding for maternal and newborn health and mortality during 2009 – 2010, by involving powerful advocacy voices not traditionally associated with maternal heath and new, influential supporters. Developing country advocates and their campaigns will be engaged with their international counterparts and a unified global campaign will influence policy and funding decisions made at key gatherings of the G20, European Union, African Union, and United Nations.
Young Champions for Maternal Health Ashoka: Innovators for The Public August 1, 2009 – September 31, 2011
The MHTF and Ashoka have partnered to create the first international program that links committed young professionals with seasoned social entrepreneurs to improve maternal health in developing countries. In December 2009, Ashoka deployed their novel on-line Changemakers mechanism to launch a 12 week competition to identify young innovators who have new ideas to address an array of age-old maternal health challenges. The competition targeted young people throughout the world and they were vetted using the same unique, multi-tiered process that Ashoka uses to select their highly regarded social entrepreneurs. On June 17th 2010, the Young Champions for Maternal Health were announced--and they will be formally introduced to the Ashoka and maternal health communities at a global Change Summit in India where they will receive orientation and guidance in developing their projects. The Young Champions will then be paired with an established Ashoka fellow who will host and mentor them over a 9-month period. At the end of the program, the Young Champions will present their final deliverables which will be widely publicized by the MHTF and Ashoka.
Meet the Young Champions here!
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