48 | Maternal Health Care in India during and after the Pandemic

For more than two decades, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supported evidence-based programs in India that promote reproductive health and rights. As the foundation phased out its grantmaking related to population and reproductive health, it partnered with Mathematica to conduct a cumulative review of its efforts to improve maternal health in India. The foundation’s maternal health quality of care strategy in India sought to improve the trajectory of health for women, children, and their families. Although the country had already made considerable progress in expanding access to maternal health services and, in the process, driving down the national maternal mortality ratio, the foundation and its grantees sought to improve the quality of these services, which is seen as a contributing factor in the pregnancy-related deaths that still occur today. Because the Mathematica report was published in late February, it summarizes the state of maternal health in India up to, but not including, the COVID-19 pandemic. On this episode of On the Evidence, six guests discuss insights from the report and provide perspectives on how the pandemic has changed the supply and demand for maternal health services. The following guests appear in the episode: - Dipa Nag Chowdhury, who served as the deputy director of the MacArthur Foundation’s India office - So O’Neil, a Mathematica senior researcher and the lead author of the cumulative review of the MacArthur Foundation’s efforts to improve the quality of maternal health care in India - Sharad Iyengar, a pediatrician and the chief executive of Action Research & Training for Health - Renu Khanna, a co-founder of the SAHAJ-Society for Health Alternatives - Vinoj Manning, chief executive officer at the Ipas Development Foundation - Aparajita Gogoi, executive director of the Centre for Catalyzing Change Find the report discussed in this episode here: https://bit.ly/3nUoolT Find bonus interviews below: Vinoj Manning: https://bit.ly/3l6GDmg Renu Khanna: https://bit.ly/39ffJ9z Sharad Iyengar: https://bit.ly/2UZfnvF Aparajita Gogoi: https://bit.ly/2V2kbAw