Former Summer Fellow Kate Mitchell Co-Authors Article on Respectful Maternity Care During COVID-19

Kate Mitchell, a doctoral candidate at the BU School of Public Health and a 2019 Graduate Summer Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, recently co-authored an article on maternal newborn health (MNH) care delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic in the journal Health and Human Rights.

In the article, the authors point to models estimating “significant increases” in mortality due to reduced MNH services stemming from efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19. The members of the Respectful Maternity Care (RMC) Global Council published a charter in 2011, which was updated last year, that lays out 10 fundamental rights of childbearing women and newborns. The Council, which includes 350 members from 45 countries, has reported several violations of those rights, including mandatory separations of mothers and newborns, breastfeeding restrictions, and increased cesarean sections without medical indication.

“Guidance from WHO on quality MNH care has not been widely applied in this crisis,” the authors write. “Instead, uncertainty about how COVID-19 impacts women and newborns is affecting clinical and interpersonal quality of care. In the absence of clear, consistent, coordinated guidance, measures are implemented based on fear instead of evidence and rights.”

Read the full article here.

The article is related to Mitchell’s research at the Pardee Center last summer, where she analyzed ways to achieve respectful maternity care in upper- and middle-income countries.