Deekshita Ramanarayanan
Deekshita Ramanarayanan is the Program Associate for the Wilson Center's Maternal Health Initiative (MHI). Her research interests focus on maternal health, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), gender equity, and global health.
Before joining the Wilson Center, Deekshita was a research intern at CHANGE, or the Center for Health and Gender Equity, researching various SRHR issues globally and how they are impacted by U.S. foreign policy. Deekshita earned her Master’s in Public Health in Maternal and Child Health from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and her B.S. in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
-
International Day for Maternal Health and Rights: Promoting the Right to Health for Pregnant People Globally
›April 11 is the International Day for Maternal Health and Rights. Globally, 800 women die each day from preventable causes due to pregnancy and childbirth. Improving maternal health outcomes and preventing maternal deaths requires a human rights-based approach that protects a person’s right to survive childbirth, to access high-quality health care, to government accountability, to equity and non-discrimination when accessing care, and to family planning and contraception. Enshrining these rights for all pregnant people is key to meaningful progress towards the prevention of maternal deaths globally.
-
International Women’s Day 2024: Investment Can Promote Equality
›Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day (IWD). It is an annual occasion to celebrate the incredible achievements of women and girls globally, while acknowledging the work still needed to push forward to make the critical human rights issue of gender equality a reality.
-
Can Global Maternal Health Investments Help Eradicate Malaria?
›The last two decades saw significant gains in reducing the incidence of malaria, but can we be doing even more to eradicate this disease? In early January 2024, a New York Times op-ed argued that millions were dying needlessly as tools to defeat malaria were within reach.
-
Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic Can Help Achieve Health for All
›“The [COVID-19] pandemic, as all of you know, severely disrupted essential health services in countries around the world, and it left many health systems reeling from the drain on resources,” said Nidhi Bouri, Assistant Administrator for Global Health at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at a recent Wilson Center event to assess lessons learned in coping with the stressors created by the global health crisis.
-
Connecting the Dots to Gender Equality and Empowerment
›“Women’s ability to access education, pursue a career outside the home, or participate politically often hinges on their ability to exercise control and autonomy over their own bodies and reproduction,” said Sarah Craven, Director of the North American Representation Office at UNFPA at a recent Wilson Center event, hosted in partnership with Population Institute, to launch their new report, Connecting the Dots: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights as Prerequisites for Global Gender Equity and Empowerment.
-
Finding the Power to Prevent Maternal Deaths: Women Deliver 2023
›The 2023 Women Deliver Conference in Kigali, Rwanda offered participants an opportunity to think deeply about gender equality, and the urgency of this moment in making progress was evident – even at a pre-conference event hosted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA): Scaling Up Actions to End Preventable Maternal Deaths: Linkages with Family Planning, Bodily Autonomy and the Health Workforce.
-
Sustaining PEPFAR’s Success through Integration, Equity, and Inclusion
›It has been two decades since President George W. Bush launched the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief – or PEPFAR, and a recent Wilson Center event to celebrate the anniversary demonstrated that its impact as one of the most successful global public health programs is indisputable. Since its inception, PEPFAR has invested more than $100 billion in the global fight against HIV and AIDS, resulting in more than 25 million lives saved and millions of new infections prevented.
-
Planning, Pleasure, and Progress: How ICFP 2022 Advanced the Family Planning Dialogue
›The sixth International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) held in Pattaya, Thailand in November 2022 offered an important reason for celebration: tens of millions more people are using a modern method of family planning now than were doing so when the first ICFP was held in London ten years ago. How has this happened? One key reason is that governments, corporations, non-governmental organizations, and donors globally are taking steps to advance reproductive freedom through providing voluntary family planning.