Several of our MPH students attended the 2018 CityMatCH Leadership and MCH Epidemiology Conference, held September 12-14, in Portland, Oregon. What follows is a post from one of these attendees.
By Tylar Williams, BS
This year I had the opportunity to attend the 2018 CityMatCH Leadership and MCH Epidemiology Conference in Portland, Oregon. I had a wonderful time meeting and connecting with different leaders in MCH and learning more about what new things are happening in the field. Dr. Sandro Galea opened the conference with a wonderful talk challenging us to take a deeper look at the way we talk about health in this country and gave us five things that we should talk about when we talk about health. He said that first we need to stop using health and healthcare interchangeably because they have different meanings. We then need to 1) talk about what causes health, 2) pay attention to emerging pathology, 3) invest in prevention, 4) focus on underlying social conditions, and 5) address persistent health gaps. I enjoyed his speech and left feeling super pumped about what was to come over the next three days.
After all of the opening activities I attended a session on innovation and improvement of prenatal care. Generally, the literature supports group prenatal care for its effects on improving birth outcomes, so this session was aimed at sharing the success stories of this model in different locations. I learned about a program called Moms2B based in Ohio. The program aims to address racial disparities in prenatal care and uses a community-based model much like CenteringPregnancy. I love how this program also works to address different social determinants that play a role in birth outcomes. For example, they partner with their local food bank to address food insecurity and have mobile clinics that come to the sites monthly to aid with access to primary care.
On day two, I attended a presentation by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance. I was introduced to this organization last year at the annual American Public Health Association meeting, so I was really excited to hear about what they accomplished over the last year. I also heard from the National Birth Equity Collaborative during this session. It’s always really inspiring to see women who look like me working in this field and really making a difference. I also loved their motto: listen to Black women, trust Black women, and invest in Black women. Later that evening I had the chance to meet with past CEMCH scholars and explore a little bit of Portland. I had a great time and Portland is definitely on my list of places to visit again.
For the last day I attended a session called Maternal Voices and it was probably my favorite session ofthe entire conference. All of the presenters spoke about how there needs to be a shift in our attitudes towards women and how it’s really important that we give them a voice and listen. We’re starting to hear more public stories now about how healthcare providers aren’t listening to women, especially women of color, when it comes to their healthcare. This can lead to outcomes that otherwise would have been prevented. It was awesome to hear these stories and I hope that as women continue to become more vocal about the care they recieve, we can start to change this behavior. Overall, City MatCH was a great time and I’m looking forward to next year’s conference! 🙂
Tylar Williams is a second-year MPH student concentrating in Maternal and Child Health and plans to graduate in May 2019. She received a bachelor’s degree in Health Education from Howard University in 2016. She is CHES certified. Her interests include nursing, midwifery, prenatal and postpartum care, and improving reproductive and sexual health education in the Black community. She loves cooking, spending time with her friends and family, and traveling.
