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Seeing and Hearing Mothers: Uncovering Poor Perinatal Mental Health
›Globally, 15 to 20 percent of women experience a perinatal mental health condition, said Sarah Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative at a recent event, held in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), on mental health support for mothers in the perinatal period. Women are more likely to develop anxiety or depression in the year after giving birth than in any other time in their lives, with suicide and overdose the leading causes of death in the first year postpartum. “And yet, the prevention, early recognition, and treatment of perinatal mental health conditions is a challenge for many, if not most, healthcare systems across the world,” said Barnes.
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Mental Health Conditions: U.S. Policies and Practice to Address the Most Common Complication of Pregnancy and Childbirth
›Maternal mental health (MMH) conditions are the most common complication of pregnancy and childbirth, affecting 1 in 5 women or childbearing individuals (800,000 U.S. families each year). Recent studies show that suicide and overdose combined are the leading cause of death for mothers in the first year postpartum, contributing to the distressingly high maternal mortality rate in the United States. Sadly, 75 percent of those experiencing MMH conditions go untreated, increasing the risk of multigenerational, long-term negative impacts on the physical, emotional, and developmental health of both the mother and child. The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled a three-fold increase in the number of pregnant women and new mothers experiencing MMH conditions. Women of color are disproportionately impacted by both the pandemic and MMH conditions, experiencing both at rates 2-3 times higher than white women.
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State of the World’s Midwifery Report 2021: Follow the Data, Invest in Midwives
›“Every day in every part of the world, midwives save the lives of women and babies and promote the health and well-being of entire communities,” writes UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem in honor of International Day of the Midwife. “They deserve our respect and gratitude, but that is not enough. Midwives deserve greater investment in their capabilities, and workplaces that empower them and fully acknowledge their skills and contributions.” Investment in midwifery could save millions of lives per year – an estimated 4.3 million annually by 2035.
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How We Birth Babies Makes It Hard to Breastfeed
›Breastfeeding may seem natural. Yet many women find it hard to get off to a good start with breastfeeding. Sharp decreases in breastfeeding rates around the world reflect this continuing challenge. While most women still choose to breastfeed, many ultimately feel they have no other choice than to stop breastfeeding earlier than anticipated. In the UK, 80 percent of mothers surveyed said they stopped breastfeeding before they wanted to. Many women describe shattered expectations, feelings of deep sadness, guilt, and anger from their breastfeeding experience.
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Reviving Culture Through First Nations Midwifery
›“It’s more than just clinical care. It’s cultural. It’s connection to country. It’s connection to land. It’s all of those things that are important to the woman and family, kinship, babies,” says Mel Briggs, a First Nations midwife in Australia, speaking about the importance of Aboriginal midwifery in this week’s Friday Podcast. Like her great-grandmother, Briggs followed the call to midwifery and finds joy in helping women and families “create really healthy, chunky, fat babies.”
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Turning Applause into Action: Investing in Women Leaders in Nursing and Midwifery
›“Midwives and nurses contribute to the health of women, families, communities, and society at large, but the impact of their care goes much further… Their care is transformational,” said Diene Keita, Deputy Executive Director for Programmes at UNFPA. She spoke at a recent event hosted by Women in Global Health, which virtually convened nurses and midwives from around the world to celebrate 100 outstanding women nurse and midwife leaders from over 50 countries. The event occurred in honor of the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, as designated by the World Health Organization (WHO). The list of 100 leaders is the first global recognition of its kind and commemorates women’s unique stories of resilience, leadership, and hard work.
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Māori Midwives on the Power of Indigenous Birthing Practices
›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.
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Midwife-Delivered Interventions Could Provide Dramatic Benefits
›In a year that has presented enormous challenges, it is even more gratifying to present evidence that strengthens the importance of midwives as providers of essential sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services and the impact they can have on maternal and neonatal mortality and stillbirths, said Anneka Knutsson, Chief of the SRH Branch at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) at a recent Wilson Center event, in partnership with UNFPA and Johnson & Johnson, to launch the Impact of Midwives study conducted by UNFPA, the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), and the World Health Organization (WHO) and published in The Lancet Global Health.
Showing posts from category midwives.