Every day there are more than 800 maternal deaths worldwide. Who are these women? They are reproductive women across the globe. They are our sisters, aunts, friends, and co-workers. They are leaders in our community, family members, and caregivers. When assessing the state of maternal morbidity and mortality in the United States, one must consider not only what we know, but also what must change.

We are in the decade of action, said Anneka Knutsson, Chief of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Branch at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), at a recent Wilson Center event on midwives’ crucial role in achieving universal health coverage by 2030. The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife to celebrate the accomplishments and importance of nurses and midwives in providing not just maternal health care, but care across the lifespan. Currently, 22 million nurses and 2 million midwives globally deliver 80 percent of all healthcare services in low-resource settings. However, the world will need 9 million more nurses and midwives by 2030 to meet rising healthcare demands.

Stacy Ann Walker could have died.

During what she thought was going to be a normal exam, Stacy learned that she would need to have a C-section. While recovering in the hospital, she began to have breathing problems and after some testing was told that her heart had been scarred by an earlier bout of rheumatic fever. Shortly after, she also learned that she had heart failure, an enlarged heart, and problems with multiple heart valves.

She was 29.

In 2003, a scabies skin disease outbreak affecting mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park was traced to people living around the national park—people with limited access to basic health and social services. To protect the people and wildlife of this special park, we launched Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), an NGO that promotes biodiversity conservation by enabling people, gorillas, and other wildlife to coexist harmoniously through improved health and wellbeing.

“Midwifery is a fix, it is not an add-on,” said Franka Cadée, President of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) at the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25. The World Health Organization designated 2020 the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife in recognition of the invaluable contributions of these two professions.  To meet the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, midwives and nurses must be valued and utilized as essential members of the health workforce.  Increased utilization of skilled midwives will also help countries achieve universal health coverage and improve access to sexual and reproductive health services, two key actions from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

In the quarter century the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program has been pondering the issues for which it’s named, the world’s demographic future has been wobbling. A key concern of analysts: How many people will farmers need to feed in 2050? Mainstream projections have teetered between 8.9 billion and 9.8 billion, amounting to an increase of between 13 and 21 percent over today’s 7.7 billion. This significant variation in projections is rarely acknowledged by prognosticators. Many simply round up today’s latest guess and state confidently that there will be 10 billion people in 2050—though just a few years ago, the number most confidently stated was 9 billion.