Women and Health Initiative

Voting in Maternal Health Task Force's upcoming People’s Choice Buzz is as easy as 1-2-3!

1. Review 10 recently published papers
2. Select your top 5
3. Cast your vote.

Make sure to mark you calendars: voting begins on Sept. 6, 2021 and you will not want to miss this!

Maternal Health Task Force wants to hear from you! Voting in the People’s Choice Buzz is your chance to vote on what you think is most important in research.

Make sure to save the date: voting begins on September 6, 2021!

Maternal Health Task Force is launching the People’s Choice Buzz newsletter on September 6, 2021! Voters will be entered into a lottery to receive a one-on-one Zoom session with an author of one of the articles voted to be part of the newsletter. This presents an opportunity for maternal health community members to directly engage with researchers and delve deeper into their work. The lottery winner will also be featured on the MHTF website! Be sure to mark your calendars-you won’t want to miss this!

This study, published today, of more than 2,100 pregnant women worldwide, has revealed that COVID-19 is associated with a higher risk of severe maternal and newborn complications than previously recognized. It provides, for the first time, detailed comparative information about the effects of COVID-19 in pregnancy, and concludes that as the risk to mothers and babies is greater than acknowledged at the beginning of the pandemic, health priority measures should include pregnant women. Dr. Ana Langer, the director of the W&HI , was a co-author on the study.

Maternal and Neonatal Morbidity and Mortality Among Pregnant Women With and Without COVID-19 Infection This cohort study assesses the association between COVID-19 and maternal and neonatal outcomes in pregnant women with COVID-19 diagnosis compared with concomitantly enrolled pregnant women without COVID-19 diagnosis.

Today we recognize International Women's Day! The W&HI is honored to be sponsor at Harvard Chan's IWD event to discuss the ongoing fight for health justice.

Covid 19 dramatically magnified pervasive gender disparities in health and wellbeing. During the last 12 months, women endured unprecedented levels of sexual and gender-based violence, were disproportionally exposed to the virus as a majority in the healthcare work force, and dropped out of the labor market due an unequal increase in domestic roles that are undervalued, unrecognized and uncompensated. Gender inequalities have now a visibility they did not have before the pandemic. The post-Covid era will provide a unique opportunity for a reset and the introduction of urgent changes to make societies more just and equal.

Who are the world's primary caregivers? . Who contributes the most to health? . Today's editorial emphasizes the need to value women's unpaid caregiving and essential role in health - something we are still not doing. Read more:

Do we care about who cares? International Women's Day, on March 8, provides an opportunity to highlight the contributions of women around the world and reflect on the gains in gender equity that have been lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has had a harmful effect on women, especially those who were already disadv...

Armed conflicts are becoming increasingly complex, threatening humanitarian access and the delivery of essential health services, and affecting at least 630 million women and children—over 8% of the world’s population—in 2017. A new four-paper Series, published in The Lancet today, exposes the far-reaching effects of modern warfare on women’s and children’s health.

Current humanitarian crises guidelines are too general to be effective in disparate conflict settings. As a first step towards filling this guidance gap, authors of the series call for agencies leading the global humanitarian response, NGOs, and academia working in conflict settings to establish a decision-making framework to guide governments and humanitarian agencies on selecting priority interventions and improve accountability.

Dr. Ana Langer, Director of W&HI, participated in many pieces as a co-author in the Lancet Series on Women's & Children's Health in Conflict Settings. Read the Series in full here: bit.ly/BRANCHconsortium

BRANCH Knowledge Translation The BRANCH Consortium is an academic research enterprise aimed at improving evidence and guidance for effective action on women’s and children’s health and nutrition in conflict settings.

Providing care that is evidence-based and respectful is crucial for building partnerships between families and the health system - and improving health outcomes for all. A failure to meet standards or a violation of standards? There is currently no agreement on which care practices might be classified as mistreatment. This new study from and informs an important conversation:

www.thelancet.com

Interested in learning more about Covid-19, Intersectionality and the Health of women?

On November 4th at 1 PM, Ana Langer, M.D., the director of the Women and Health Initiative (W&HI) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Dr. Jewel Gausman, Sc.D., M.H.S., a research associate at the W&HI, will lead a plain-language discussion of topics explored in their commentary article “Sex and Gender Disparities in the COVID-19 Pandemic,” recently published in the Journal of Women’s Health. Although fewer women are dying from COVID-19 than men, this finding may serve to oversimplify the biological, behavioral, social, and systemic factors that may affect differences in disease presentation, progression, and outcomes between women and men.

COVID-19, Intersectionality, and the Health of Women | Office of Research on Women's Health Virtual only. Time of meeting subject to change. All times are in the Eastern Time zone.

Checkout this discussion on Black Maternal Mortality in the Covid-19 era with NowThis correspondent and Dr. Ana Langer, Director of the WHI at HSPH
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CEPfDRxlo7t/?igshid=13vi7lytole9w

NowThis correspondent @simplyzinhle speaks with head of the @harvard Women and Health Initiative Dr. Ana Langer about Black maternal mortality in the era of COVID-19

If you are a health professional involved in providing maternal and/or newborn care (midwives, nurses, obstetricians, medical doctors, medical/clinical officers, community health workers, etc.) please consider responding to this survey.

As the COVID-19 pandemic evolves, the COVID-19 maternal survey team at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp Belgium are tracking and responding to the needs of health professionals, and women and their families. At this time, they would like to invite you to answer this survey available in 11 languages here: https://bit.ly/2NYGx2a. It takes 15-30 minutes to complete.

If you are interested in viewing the first findings from their survey, you can view them here: https://gh.bmj.com/content/5/6/e002967.info.

Voices from the frontline: findings from a thematic analysis of a rapid online global survey of maternal and newborn health professionals facing the COVID-19 pandemic Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially impacted maternity care provision worldwide. Studies based on modelling estimated large indirect effects of the pandemic on services and health outcomes. The objective of this study was to prospectively document experiences of frontline maternal a...