Improving global maternal mortality, women's health and related U.S. foreign policy

In the Center for Strategic & International Studies' (CSIS) "Smart Global Health" blog, Phillip Nieburg, senior associate of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, discusses a recent report (.pdf) he wrote, titled "Improving Maternal Mortality and Other Aspects of Women's Health: The United States' Global Role," "that addresses key challenges to improving maternal mortality and women's health worldwide and talks about what the related priorities of U.S. foreign policy should be." He says, "Rather than continuing what appears to me as a piecemeal approach to global aspects of reproductive health, with separate programs to address, e.g., gender-based violence, women and HIV/AIDS, maternal mortality, family planning, cervical cancer, girls' education, etc., I argue in my report that the United States should develop and implement a comprehensive global plan for women's health that includes males as well as females, using coordinated prevention and care programming for each stage of the reproductive health life cycle" (10/25).