Our Mission

Ending PREVENTABLE maternal MORTALITY & RESPECTFUL CARE OF ALL WOMEN

Our role as a implementing partner is to consider cultural value systems, resource availability, and evidence quality - in our effort to inform guidelines and policy. In order to help make guidelines and policy a reality in the clinic, we also design and facilitate capacity building workshops, custom implementation programs, and perform follow-up monitoring.

Our spring of information come from systematic literature reviews, in-person innovation labs with staff and experts, as well as colloquia and forum series to help give any policy-formation process a local footing. We facilitate thoughtful, safe dialogue sessions on meaning, limitations, and impact on the communities to which they apply.

Recommendations for what constitute safe and effective care for most pregnant women are clearly defined by many international organizations, including the World Health Organization and numerous Professional Colleges of Obstetricians and of Midwives around the world (REF). The major challenge is how to effectively implement what is known, and how to influence health workers to support the proper delivery of evidence-based interventions to all mothers and move beyond entrenched practices. 

Development work in the realm of health has been preoccupied with the creation of standardized practices that strive to meet very broad indicators of health care quality, (such as survival rate of mother and infant). While these are important metrics, they are not sufficient to prevent harmful birth practices, trauma during birth, and the cascade of severe medical complications for mother and newborn that stem from health systems that looks solely at survival. Very simply, we can do better.

Education of health workers remains a critical part of good health development in resource-poor settings. Unfortunately, many training programs have failed to achieve significant impacts in health outcomes and actually change practices because of the a lack of follow-through. An example, when trainings on maternal health care use daily attendance allowances to supplement inadequate salaries being paid to local workers, research shows negative rates of new skill uptake and decreased likelihood of improved health worker practice (REF). In Kenya, while maternity clinics in vulnerable or resource-poor areas typically lack material support of government agencies, they also lack guidance and incentives to keep up with research and undertake mandatory skills-trainings to stay current with an evolving body of evidence.

Ensuring that health professionals’ practice accords to evidence-based standards is the key to our mission. Not only does it affect both quality and cost of care, but it protects the dignity patient and practitioner.