India Policy Insights investigates variation in the quality of maternal and newborn care between smaller areas within districts in India

Maps of India showing maternal and newborn health

Researchers affiliated with the India Policy Insights initiative have published the findings of a cross-sectional study  in JAMA Network Open that reports there being more variation in maternal and newborn care quality (measured by 11 individual components of care) in smaller, “within-district” geographic areas compared to the district- and state-level, suggesting that “policy around maternal and child health care needs to be designed more precisely to consider district mean and…

Brittney Butler pens op-ed: “Black mothers die at higher rates. Florida’s ‘Stop WOKE Act’ could make that worse”

Head shot of Brittney Francis

Harvard Bell Fellow Brittney Butler, PhD, who also holds a joint appointment as an FXB Health and Human Rights Research Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has penned an op-ed published in the Miami Herald in which she sounds the alarm about the potential damaging effects of the “Stop WOKE Act” (House Bill 7, or HB 7) to Black families in Florida. The bill is sitting…

Postnatal health checkups at home by community health workers benefit mothers and babies in Kenya

Harvard Pop Center faculty members Margaret McConnell, PhD, and Jessica Cohen, PhD, are authors on a study published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth that suggests that home visits by community health workers within first three days of child birth are an effective and affordable way to help new mothers flag postnatal health issues for themselves and their babies, and make it more likely that they seek care.