Neglected Populations ? Decreassing Inequalities & Improving Measurement in Maternal Health

 

Progress for All

As a maternal health community, we have much to celebrate as we reflect on progress made with global attention to the Millennium Development Goals. Yet, most countries did not meet MDG 5, to reduce maternal mortality by three quarters by 2015, and, despite progress, inequality prevails both among and within countries. The Sustainable Development Goals emphasize the urgent need for increased equality everywhere.

 

In order to address the need to reduce inequalities and showcase necessary measurement improvements to uncover them, the Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF) is partnering for the fourth time with PLOS for a new MHTF-PLOS collection, “Neglected Populations: Decreasing inequalities and improving measurement in maternal health.” The MHTF’s overarching goal for our collections is to promote and facilitate the wide dissemination of new evidence on this critical topic, highlighting in particular the work of maternal health researchers in low-resource settings.

 

The epicenter of inequality is often found in neglected populations. Groups of women who are marginalized based on their race, ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status, citizenship (or statelessness), age, disability, or geography experience some of the worst health outcomes. As the tide of global health priorities turns to universal health coverage, we must ensure that those worst off are provided access to the full spectrum of quality reproductive, maternal and newborn health care.

 

Call for Papers

Through this latest collection of papers, we seek to draw attention to issues of inequality within maternal health, with a particular focus on new and innovative measurement tools and approaches to track disparities and guide efforts to reduce them.

 

Papers submitted to this collection must present and discuss primary quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods research in maternal health with the following focus:

 

Analysis of strategies to assess and address the needs of neglected populations

Community-based research conducted in neglected populations

Implementation and evaluation of programs where the neglected population they were designed to serve was included throughout the planning, implementation, and evaluation process

Use of disaggregated data to address inequalities in maternal health

Presentation and evaluation of new measurement tools or novel application of existing ones to reduce disparities in maternal health

For details on how to submit papers, please visit the MHTF blog.

 

www.maternalhealthtaskforce.org