Poor quality care is now a bigger barrier to reducing mortality than insufficient access to healthcare, said Dr. Margaret Kruk, Chair of The Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems in the Sustainable Development Goal Era. She spoke at a recent Wilson Center event on strategies to improve and sustain high-quality reproductive, maternal, and newborn care at scale. “We estimate that 8.6 million lives are lost every year due to lack of access to high quality care, and of that 8.6 million, five million lives are lost by people who have already reached out to the health system.”

The silver tsunami is approaching: Many countries, not all of them rich, are facing the challenges of an ageing population thanks to growing life expectancies and shrinking birth rates.

Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland, and Maeve Higgins, Irish comic, have teamed up to talk climate change with pioneering women leaders from around the world. In the coming weeks, their new podcast, Mothers of Invention, will feature an African politician, an Indian scientist, a Native American activist, and many more.

“The idea to make this film came from a very personal place,” said filmmaker Luciana Kaplan at a recent Wilson Center screening of her documentary Rush Hour, recalling how a woman who worked for her spent six hours a day on public transportation. “I have to make a film about this,” she said she told herself, “because this is a silent enemy that is attacking all of us in big cities.”

It’s 2018, so why are women still dying in childbirth? This episode of Everybody Counts, hosted by Jennifer D. Sciubba, a professor of political demography at Rhodes College, explores why maternal mortality is a global issue, what policy solutions can keep mothers healthy, and why valuing women is at the heart of the issue.