“The places in the world where the environment is most fragile, women’s health is most fragile,” said Leila Darabi, director of global communications for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, at the Wilson Center. “The negative impacts on the environment tend to affect women the most. Women are the people who are planting kitchen gardens, women are traditional healers, and so they often feel the impact first when those things are degraded.”

USAID’s annual report to Congress on its global health programs breaks down the broad array of initiatives carried out each year “from the American people” to prevent child and maternal deaths, provide safe access to water, combat infectious disease, and deliver HIV/AIDS relief, among other priorities. Maternal and child health are of particular focus, with the agency helping to launch the Child Survival Call to Action, London Summit on Family Planning, and U.S. Government Action Plan on Children in Adversity last year. The authors report significant declines in maternal and newborn mortality rates for priority countries and the establishment of “national contraceptive security strategies” in 36 out of 47 USAID-supported countries since 2003. “All of these efforts align under U.S. goals to end extreme poverty and promote peace and prosperity worldwide, which result in improved security at home and better markets for U.S. businesses abroad,” writes Assistant Administrator Dr. Ariel Pablos-Méndez.

Despite increases in the availability of maternal health care across Nigeria, maternal mortality rates remain high, averaging 630 per 100,000 live births in 2010, compared to the world average of 210. “This is data we are not proud of,” said Philippa Momah, board director of Nigeria’s White Ribbon Alliance, at the Wilson Center. “We believe that one of the issues is the way health care providers treat our women. This may be causing a 20 percent drop-out rate in the health care system.” [Video Below]

How can NGOs and civil society promote environmental protection and improve people’s health and livelihoods in remote tropical forests? Two NGOs with innovative programs in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea spoke at the Wilson Center on May 30 about their efforts to simultaneously tackle these issues and highlight their intricate relationship. 

Physical, sexual, or psychological harm by a spouse or partner is a major factor in maternal and reproductive health, said Jay Silverman at the Wilson Center last month.

Silverman, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, cited a 15-country study of both developed and developing countries that found 25 to 75 percent of women have suffered from intimate partner violence at least once. And the effects are very significant, both in terms of the health of mothers and their children. [Video Below]

Pathfinder International’s Strengthening Communities Through Integrated Programming (SCIP) is part of a new push towards integrated development – looking at communities as a whole and addressing multiple, traditionally-siloed sectors at once. SCIP integrates both its activities and its funding to great effect in Mozambique.

“Improving the equity of women, the treatment of women and girls, the value of women and girls in society is a very important means of improving population health,” says Dr. Anita Raj of the University of California, San Diego. Traditional societal expectations of women and girls in India contribute to high early marriage rates, low birth spacing, high rates of sexually transmitted infections, and high rates of abuse. Efforts to improve maternal and child health should take these and other gender inequities into consideration. “The need to work on these issues and work on them immediately cannot be overstated,” she said.