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 brought together over 600 professionals and students in the Maternal and Child Health field. Below is a reflection from one of our attendees!
By: Rachael Tessema
Rachael Tessema, has a BA in Biology from the University of Virginia, is a second-year MPH student at Tulane SPHTM concentrating in Maternal and Child Health. She plans to graduate in May 2025. Her interests include reproductive health, policy, and the intersection of public health and business and technology. She also loves to run, weightlift, read, and try new foods.
The City Match conference was a truly fascinating experience. Overall being able to see the vastness of the different projects, programs and focuses surrounding maternal and child health was inspiring. I attended several talks though the one that I found to be particularly interesting was on “Opportunities to Advance Equity through Medicate.” One of the speakers in this session was Kathy Thompson who discussed the significance of high-quality hospitals compared to low-quality hospitals being an important factor in decreasing maternal mortality rates for both black and white birthing persons (though more significantly for black women). After this speaker, Arden Handler spoke about her work on looking into the benefits of expanding Medicate in Illinois. She concluded that it is a necessary but not sufficient strategies for addressing race. Ethical inequities in maternal care. She discussed how access to care is important for those in the post-partum period, if there is not an increase in the quality of care the benefits of expanding will not be seen to the extent that we want it to.
Finally, we were able to hear from Krystale Littlejohn in her book “Just Get the Pill” where she talked about the experiences of and findings from interviews with women of all races on their experience with contraceptives. I was fascinated by the way she described doctors’ perspectives, women’s perspectives and those of their partners or other men. I’ve put the book on my “to-read” list.
