Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) Conference: Experience as an MCH Student

During my Masters in Public Health program, I have participated in both the Maternal Child Health (MCH) and Global Health concentrations which reflects my interest in reproductive health issues outside of a domestic lens. I felt it was important to learn about global public health practice concurrently with my MCH courses, because MCH issues exist across national borders. Other countries are experiencing maternal and infant mortality crises and have developed and implemented their own novel solutions that could be adapted and applied in other contexts. Similarly, within the field of global health, many initiatives are focused on improving the state of maternal and infant care. Both my Applied Practice Experience (APE) and Integrative Learning Experience (ILE) were focused on maternal issues in lower- to middle-income countries, specifically in West Africa. I benefitted from receiving advice and funding from both the MCH and global health programs at UIC, including scholarship support for my APE and funding for conferences such as the CUGH conference.

At the conference, I attended sessions that had an explicit focus on MCH populations as well as sessions that addressed larger issues in the state of global health such as decolonization and effective partnerships between academic researchers and international public health practitioners. One session I attended focused on an intervention in Tanzania with the goal of reducing the number of neonatal deaths by half, called NEST360. Their approach was system-wide, within the country, and engaged every level of the maternal health care system before the intervention was implemented. The NEST360 team met with midwives, physicians, local government, Ministry of Health officials, technology companies, biomedical engineers, and medical schools to ensure a rollout strategy was integrated across all levels of care in Tanzania. The team created comprehensive and standardized manuals teaching essential newborn care skills, provided technical equipment to allow care centers to offer higher levels of neonatal care (CPAP machines, incubators, newborn monitoring systems), and trained healthcare professionals on preventive maintenance skills to maintain the technical equipment over time. I noted a lot of parallels between the approach in NEST360 and the perinatal regionalization efforts in Illinois, which aims to integrate higher level neonatal care centers into all levels of delivery care and concentrate resources and expertise so it can be accessed by everyone who needs it. Further, I think the guiding principles for the NEST360 should be applied to other MCH interventions, including using a strengths-based approach, creating standardized and free training materials, and prioritizing mentorship to scale up the intervention over time.

Another session I attended focused on the health needs of children orphaned by COVID19. The scope of the issue and ongoing solutions were presented from the perspective of several researchers from different countries. Remarkably, the risk factors and challenges faced by the COVID19 orphan population were very similar regardless of their national origin. Similarly, many researchers shared solutions that could be applied in different contexts such as universal child stipends, orphan registries, and timely interpersonal counseling targeted at orphans. Importantly, these solutions required systems thinking and cross-sector collaboration at the national and even international level. This session was another example underscoring the importance of taking a global lens to broad issues. For example, many vulnerable youths were dealing with international conflict, migration, trafficking both before and after becoming orphaned, highlighting the inadequacy of using solely a domestic framework for the orphan population.

A cross-cutting theme of the conference was decolonization within global health. I attended several sessions that touched on the theory, status, and necessity of decolonial practice within global health. The information I learned is also broadly applicable and relevant for even domestic MCH practice, which shares many of the same foundations and structures as global health. I do not think I would see the influence and centrality of colonization in the state of maternal healthcare in the United States without the input of scholars from the global south speaking to their experience as practitioners and connecting the dots to how the global north contributes and perpetuates colonialism. For example, scholars spoke about how 80% of global health funding and authorship goes to researchers and organizations from the global north. Additionally, the historical devaluation of public health practice expertise in favor of academic research continues to enforce a professional hierarchy within global health, which is echoed in local MCH work as well. Some solutions to these ongoing issues that were highlighted by several speakers soliciting publications from community partners, public health practitioners, and advocates to enrich the information available in traditional journals. Additionally, the use of transparent decision-making for funding and research direction with pre-assigned criteria for organizations doing global health work. Naturally, these practices will eventually yield organizations that move from a hierarchal structure to a network design that center local community relationships.

The future of MCH will require international collaboration, where knowledge and resources are reciprocal between professionals in the global north and the global south. I look forward to seeing future colleagues and students in the MPH program focus on the intersection between MCH and global health issues because this unique focus will enrich the overall understanding of both individual disciplines.