Several of our second-year MCH students are looking forward to attending the 2024 CityMatCH Leadership and MCH Epidemiology Conference in Seattle, WA, on September 9-11. With the theme “Reaching New Heights: Strengthening MCH Across Generations,” the event is expected to bring together over 600 professionals and students in the Maternal and Child Health field. Below is a reflection from one of our attendees!
By: Annie Pasterz
As a first-time CityMatCH attendee, I was blown away by the breadth of information presented at the conference. I greatly enjoyed the range of MCH topics presented in sessions, and the ability to choose between them. I feel I deepened my knowledge in interest areas as well as broadened my horizons in MCH spaces I do not know much about.
My favorite plenary session was presented by Dr. Krystale E. Littlejohn entitled Gendered Compulsory Birth Control. As someone with a deep interest in the way we discuss and present contraceptive options to young women in the United States I found her discussion of the gendering of birth control extremely enlightening. I resonated with the stories she told of women in less than satisfactory birth control situations. I felt like she was speaking to all the things in this contraceptive education space that I feel so passionate about. In my career path, I plan to center psychology in my approach to MCH and I loved the discussion of her application of a sociological to this work. I found her approach to be extremely thought-provoking and impactful and I have reflected on her discussion multiple times since.
I have also reflected on the session I attended surrounding culturally competent maternal mental support. The session was led by 4 doulas from Wisconsin and centered around how we can create more resilient maternal mental health systems and foster resilience for maternal populations in their perinatal stage. I found the discussion very compelling. I wondered during the session what it would look like to integrate provider-led education into the MCH curriculum. Hearing about the struggles of doulas to manage patients’ mental health and the struggle of mental health providers to integrate their work with doulas was new to me. In learning about the practices and policies that govern our systems in class, I would love to additionally hear what providers in MCH face on a day-to-day basis. I loved my time at City MatCH and left with a wealth of information to utilize in my classroom experiences.
