Sara Matthews
Sara Matthews is a Kimpton Fellow working with the Wilson Center's Maternal Health Initiative and Office of Scholars and Academic Relations. Sara graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in Public Policy Studies with a specialization in Human Rights in June 2020.
Sara is particularly interested in how socioeconomic factors interact with and impact health, especially among historically marginalized populations. During her undergraduate career, she interned with FosterClub, where she worked on a policy campaign promoting health care access for former foster youth, and she wrote her honors thesis on the intersections between housing status and health outcomes among chronically homeless populations. In the future, Sara hopes to work at the intersection of research and policy to promote more equitable health outcomes for all.
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Factor Housing into Maternal and Neonatal Health Policy
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The United States is facing a crucial moment, one in which more pregnant women are at risk of becoming housing insecure than at any other time in recent history. This leaves an unprecedented number of mothers and babies vulnerable to the associated adverse health risks. Housing instability – which includes challenges ranging from struggles paying rent to chronic homelessness – harms maternal and neonatal health as much as smoking during pregnancy. The economic effects of COVID-19 threaten to exacerbate the adverse health outcomes associated with homelessness.
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Māori Midwives on the Power of Indigenous Birthing Practices
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Camille Harris, Registered Māori Midwife, is unapologetic about her decision to study midwifery and practice exclusively with Māori families, in this week’s Friday Podcast. “It was always to serve my people,” she said. Both Harris and her professional partner, Registered Māori Midwife, Waimaire Onekawa, started their midwifery careers later in life with a clear dedication to Māori women in New Zealand. “And we just want to be able to give women—Māori women—and whanau [family], the love and care that we would hope to receive if we were the people being the recipients,” said Onekawa. -
More Midwife-based Interventions Could Save Millions of Lives
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“This is real,” said Franka Cadée, President of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM). “And we can no longer get around it. And we can no longer linger.” She spoke at a recent Wilson Center event, in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Johnson & Johnson, launching a new study, Impact of Midwives, published in The Lancet Global Health. If any other intervention could have the same impact as midwives or midwifery, it would be implemented worldwide immediately, she said.
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A Dangerous Dichotomy: Women’s Paid and Unpaid Work During COVID-19
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“While the global crisis has increased demand for research, such opportunities have created inequalities and distortion in the scientific community,” write the authors of a recent Social Science Research Network (SSRN) study that examines the gendered impact of COVID-19 in academia. The study finds that COVID-19 has disproportionately penalized the scientific productivity of female academics.
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Building Bridges: What It Will Take to Develop a Safe, Effective COVID-19 Vaccine
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“I think we have to remember not to forget what these diseases did in the past and to actively collaborate, to work with each other, and to communicate well that vaccines work,” said Dr. Paul Duprex, Director of Pitt’s Center for Vaccine Research and Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at a recent Wilson Center event on the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), March of Dimes, and the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation.
