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Arkansas health leaders push to improve maternal, infant care access in rural areas
Many Arkansas families welcoming a new baby are also navigating long drives, limited resources and difficult access to care, particularly in rural parts of the
Mother's Day Black Maternal Health Panel happening Saturday, May 9th
Join writer Kirsten Corley Bennett as she shares her postpartum journey, moderated by 3x Emmy winner Jasmine Minor, discussing Black Maternal Health.
Advancing maternal health: How HCA Healthcare supports moms from pregnancy to postpartum
HCA Healthcare experts explain how we support moms and moms-to-be through education, clinical innovation and compassionate, coordinated care.
Alabama college receives $1.8 million grant to improve maternal and child health
UAB’s School of Public Health will receive $1.8 million over the next five years from the Health Resources and Services Administration as a Center of Excellence in Maternal and Health Education.
Money for maternal health
The Dallas Foundation will invest $2 million toward improving pediatric and maternal health in underserved parts of Dallas County, the foundation announced this week.
World Patient Safety Day 2025 Webinar on Goal 4: Prevent health care-associated infections
Webinar Series on the World Patient Safety Day GoalsSafe care for every newborn and every childPatient safety for newborns and children remains a critical global health priority. Children are particularly vulnerable to preventable harm due to developmental factors, dependency on caregivers, complex medication dosing requirements, diagnostic uncertainty, and increased susceptibility to health care-associated infections.Ensuring safe care for every newborn and every child is therefore essential to improving health outcomes and strengthening quality of care across health systems.The World Patient Safety Day 2025 campaign, under the theme:“Safe care for every newborn and every child: Patient safety from the start!”emphasizes the importance of embedding patient safety principles early in life and across the continuum of maternal, newborn and child health services.The campaign identifies five priority goals, calling for coordinated action by governments, health professionals, professional associations, civil society, and families globally.Webinar 4: “Prevent health care-associated infections”Thursday 7 May 2026, 14.00–15.30 CESTJoin this five-part webinar series on the Patient Safety Goals for safe care for every newborn and every child, featuring global experts and practitioners discussing real-world implementation, challenges, and solutions to reduce avoidable harm.The webinar will address the following topics:• Why infection prevention and control is essential for safe newborn and childcare• How Goal 4 can be implemented in practice at the point of care• What health care workers, leaders, managers, and policymakers can do to Prevent healthcare-associated infections.Registration linkDownload the flyer
These Black maternal health groups laid groundwork for perinatal grants, then they were left out
The work they helped lead has garnered state dollars, legislative support and public praise, but their community-rooted organizations weren’t selected to reap any of the funds.
Global Health & WASH: May 2026 Funding Opportunities (14 new opportunities!)
The May update for Global Health & WASH brings new calls that cluster around three distinct shifts: LMIC research leadership moving from funder encouragement into a hard eligibility constraint, pharmaceutical and corporate-linked funders running structurally independent education and use-inspired research portfolios at substantial scale, and AI adoption shifting decisively from speculative tool to operational capability across health and WASH systems alike. In LMIC Research Leadership as Eligibility, Not Encouragement, Wellcome anchors the dominant signal of the month with three separate major calls that all require or strongly center LMIC leadership in their basic eligibility architecture. Wellcome’s ESIC Hubs (£1.5-£1.9M per hub over 3-5 years) explicitly requires an LMIC-based lead applicant, treating Global South leadership as a design constraint rather than a participation goal. Wellcome’s Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Development Award funds transdisciplinary teams whose lead must be a mid-career or established researcher based at an organization in Africa, South Asia, or Southeast Asia. Wellcome’s larger Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Award (£1M-£8M for optimizing licensed interventions) requires the administering organization to be in eligible LMIC regions and at least 50% of applicants based there. Around Wellcome, the same pattern shows up at smaller scale and across funders: CHINNOVA channels $1M into West and Central African research institutions for climate-health work; IBRO’s Neuroscience Training Grants explicitly tier ceilings by region of residence with Africa receiving the highest amount ($5,000); IHME’s GBD Emerging Researcher Award reserves at least one of its two annual awards for an LMIC researcher; Sidaction’s HIV Cure call funds research teams across France, the Netherlands, and eligible African countries with a minimum two-country collaboration requirement. Taken together, these calls signal a meaningful shift in how research equity is being operationalized — not as encouragement language at the bottom of a call, but as a structural feature of who can lead, where the work must be administered, and what proportion of the team must be regionally rooted. In Pharma-Funded Independent Medical Education and Use-Inspired Research, the lineup this month is unusually deep. Pfizer alone runs four parallel calls under independent education and quality improvement frameworks: a Migraine and Women’s Health RFP (200K x 2-year, $500K pool), Migraine IME ($200K, $1M pool), JAK Inhibitor evidence-based education ($100K), and Maternal Vaccination HCP Education in Saudi Arabia ($75K), plus a separate Pediatric Pneumococcal Surveillance research call in Saudi Arabia ($400K per project). Novo Nordisk Foundation runs four parallel calls of its own at substantial scale: Infectious Diseases Catalyst Grants (DKK 60M pool, up to DKK 7M collaborative), Non-Diabetic Endocrinology Collaborative Grants (DKK 53M pool, DKK 5-10M per project), Pioneer Innovator Grant Health (DKK 1.1M), and Distinguished Innovator Grant Health (DKK 6.8M). LEO Foundation deploys DKK 2-4M per project for dermatology research excellence. Pfizer’s framing across calls deliberately separates the funding from product promotion, emphasizing measurable practice-relevant change and structural distance between scientific outputs and commercial activity. Novo Nordisk’s “use-inspired” hard filter pushes researchers toward a credible translation pathway from mechanism to deployable tool. The pattern: industry-aligned funders are running structurally independent portfolios at meaningful $ that fund implementation evidence, not promotion. In AI as Operational Capability, Not Speculation, several calls this month explicitly treat AI adoption as a near-term operational question with real evidence and governance requirements, rather than a speculative trend to be watched. Wellcome’s ESIC Hubs frames AI as “the accelerator” for evidence synthesis, asking hubs to translate technical innovation into adoption-ready workflows that can match real-world policy timelines. UNICEF Venture Fund’s new Climate Tech for Children’s Health call funds for-profit startups deploying AI, machine learning, and blockchain in low-resource environments, with a strict requirement that solutions must already have a working prototype with promising pilot results. The Water Research Foundation has launched two simultaneous AI calls treating reproducibility, cybersecurity guardrails, and human-in-the-loop deployments as core design constraints rather than nice-to-haves: one on GenAI and Agentic AI in water utilities ($200K), one on alternatives to water shutoffs that explicitly screens for implementation economics evidence. Nordic Innovation’s quantum technology call (NOK 4.5M) extends the same logic into life science and healthcare, demanding consortium-stage projects mature enough to test with real users. TEF-Health offers €300K in subsidized testing infrastructure for European healthcare AI and robotics SMEs. The pattern: funders are converting AI pilots into playbooks, requiring transfer evidence and risk controls before AI can move from experimentation to sector-wide operational practice. For LMIC-based researchers in infectious disease or evidence synthesis, the three Wellcome calls together represent the deepest concentration of LMIC-led research capital in recent memory — pair the Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Development Award (£200K, deadline May 19) as a strategic pipeline feeder into the larger Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Award (£1-£8M, deadline June 2), since the development award functions explicitly as a track into the larger trial scheme. For Nordic researchers, the four Novo Nordisk Foundation calls plus LEO Foundation and Nordic Innovation Quantum represent ~$30M in regional research capital this cycle, all with deadlines clustered in May-August. For WASH practitioners, the three Water Research Foundation calls together (each up to $200K) are a cluster worth reading across — one on AI deployment, one on shutoff alternatives, one rewarding applied innovation — and the strongest applicants will articulate how their work bridges utility operations to policy-relevant evidence. For US-based clinical researchers and educators, the four Pfizer calls plus the APF Portfolio’s 80+ programs form an unusually accessible recurring pipeline; APF’s prohibition on indirect costs is a meaningful structural feature for early-career applicants whose institutions might otherwise absorb significant overhead. Snapshot of New Opportunities Total Estimated Funding Pool: $100 Million+ USD The grants are organized into three categories: Open Calls: Current grant and opportunities with a deadline. Grants are listed by closing date. 39 open opportunities- 14 new! Rolling Applications: current grant and opportunities with rolling applications (but it’s still best to submit as early as possible). 14 rolling opportunities- 1 new opportunity! Long term planning: Grants that have closed their current rounds, but are expected to open new windows. 4 long term opportunities! A quick tip for returning readers: if you want to jump straight to the newest additions, use CTRL F to search for “New!” and navigate quickly to the latest funding opportunities This post is for paid subscribers. This helps support the time and effort it takes to curate and organize these opportunities. Subscribe To keep this accessible to everyone who needs it, we’re happy to offer pay what you can rates. You can find more details here. Open Calls: Migraine Competitive Grant Program: Migraine and Women’s Health (Quality Improvement and/or Research RFP), Pfizer.*Closing soon!* Pfizer, in collaboration with the American Headache Society, is seeking independent quality improvement and research projects that close persistent gaps in migraine care for women across the United States. The funding logic centers on measurable, practice-relevant change: proposals should generate actionable evidence, tools, or system improvements that can be shared and used widely, not just within a single site. Priority areas span menstrual migraine and screening in women’s health settings, the role of hormonal fluctuations across the lifespan, sex-specific risk factors, comorbidities and quality-of-life burden, and disparities in outcomes by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The call is structured as a two-step competitive process with an initial Letter of Intent, with the strongest concepts expected to translate scientific insight into implementable improvements in diagnosis, management, and equity. Geographies: United States. Who can apply: U.S.-based organizations (not individuals), including professional schools, healthcare institutions, professional organizations, and other entities focused on healthcare improvement. Funding amount: Up to USD $200,000 total over 2 years; total pool USD $500,000. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health; Focus areas: migraine, women’s health, quality improvement, clinical research, menstrual migraine, health disparities. Deadline: LOI: May 5, 2026; Full proposal (by invitation): August 28, 2026. Learn more and apply here. This RFP rewards “shareable impact”: the most competitive submissions will pair rigorous methods with a clear plan for system uptake and dissemination beyond the originating institution. ReSSARC: Strengthening the Health Sector and Food Security in the Central African Republic (AID 013381/01/0) Call for Proposals, Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS). *Closing soon!* AICS is seeking a limited set of high-capacity humanitarian partners to deliver an integrated package that stabilizes essential health services while reducing acute malnutrition and strengthening food security resilience in priority areas of the Central African Republic. The funder’s logic is explicitly nexus-based: proposals should meet urgent, life-saving needs while reinforcing local systems, coordination mechanisms, and community-level capacity so results persist beyond the emergency window. AICS emphasizes inclusion and protection outcomes, expecting gender-sensitive design and explicit measures for groups facing compounded vulnerability, including women, children under five, internally displaced people, and people with disabilities. The call also signals a localization pathway, encouraging stronger collaboration with national NGOs and balanced partnerships, alongside clear coordination with existing cluster and humanitarian actors to minimize duplication and improve coverage. Geographies: Central African Republic (Bangui, Ombella-Mpoko, Ouham, Ouham-Pende, Lim-Pende, Lobaye). Who can apply: Non-profit organizations registered with AICS, plus eligible non-profits without an office in Italy that have a pre-existing collaboration agreement with an AICS-listed organization. Funding amount: Total pool EUR €1,800,000; max EUR €800,000 (single applicant) or EUR €1,000,000 (ATS). Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health; Focus areas: malnutrition prevention and treatment, maternal and child health, community health services, food security and resilience, localization partnerships Deadline: May 5, 2026. Learn more and apply here. This call is structured to reward partners who can link frontline service delivery to system durability and localization, not just short-term coverage gains. Contracts for Innovation in drug and alcohol addiction healthcare, Innovate UK. *Closing soon!* Innovate UK, on behalf of the Office for Life Sciences Addiction Healthcare Goals program, is procuring R&D to accelerate innovations that can improve treatment outcomes, strengthen recovery, and reduce harm and deaths linked to drug and alcohol addiction. The competition is positioned as a market-facing readiness push: selected projects are expected to advance solutions toward later-stage validation, generate evidence of user acceptability and UK market fit, and map credible routes through regulatory and certification requirements. Innovate UK signals a preference for innovations that can be field-tested in relevant UK settings and progressed to TRL 6 or 7, with practical plans for commercialization after contract completion. This structure favors applicants that can execute most work in-house, co-develop with service providers and people with lived experience, and translate technical progress into deployable tools for addiction healthcare delivery. Geographies: United Kingdom. Who can apply: Single organizations of any size (including EU, EEA, or international) leading delivery, with most work and key deliverables carried out in the UK; subcontractors for specialist skills only. Funding amount: GBP £200,000–1.5 million per project (inclusive of VAT); Total pool: GBP £20 million (across two strands). Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health; Focus areas: Mental Health, Health Systems Strengthening, Research & Development, Technology Access. Deadline: May 6, 2026 (11:00am). Learn more and apply here. This call uses procurement to pull near-market addiction innovations toward operational proof and adoption pathways in UK services.
Changing the System to Support Maternal Mental Health
In the Greater Washington region, infant and maternal health is in peril. Black women make up about half of all births in DC but account for 90% of pregnancy-related deaths. This crisis is fueled in part by the structural failure to prioritize maternal mental health. Until policy and practice reflect this truth, outcomes will continue
Black maternal health, systemic issues Black women face in health care & the real world consequences
In this edition of Real Conversations in the QC, the cast sat down with community members and local experts to break down disease and healthcare issues that often affect the Black community.
Black maternal health, systemic issues Black women face in health care & the real world consequences
In this edition of Real Conversations in the QC, the cast sat down with community members and local experts to break down disease and healthcare issues that often affect the Black community.
Check in with your representatives in Washington: Supreme Court decision, maternal health bill and more
In Congress, Athens-Clarke County is represented by Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock and Republican Rep. Mike Collins. Here is the latest from Washington, D.C.
Strengthening maternal health starts after families leave the hospital
In a country where most maternal deaths are preventable, expanding proven, community-based visiting support must be part of how we move forward.
Experts: Midwives are the solution to Black maternal health disparities
Midwives do more than birth babies, and their role in pregnancy and childbirth is being re-evaluated as a way to reduce the high rate of maternal mortality ...
Austin March for Babies to support maternal and infant health
This weekend, March of Dimes will host a community walk with the goal of raising funds to improve the health of moms and babies in Central Texas.
Direct Relief Ships 5.9M Doses of Medicine for Maternal Health, Disaster Response and Pediatric Care
Over the past seven days, Direct Relief dispatched 443 shipments of requested medical aid to health care providers across 36 U.S. states and territories and 16 countries. The shipments included 5.9…
Lansing Latino legislative advocacy event brings labor issues, maternal health into focus
In the basement of a church in downtown Lansing, members of Michigan’s Latin community grappled with policy and bold ideas that could help them protect their civil rights and attain tangible political power statewide. On Thursday, MI Poder, a nonprofit organization dedicated to amplifying Latinx grassroots efforts and justice-driven policy change, hosted its fourth-annual Latino […]
Clemson Rural Health receives $7.7M Maternal Care Access Grant to Improve Care of Mothers and Babies in South Carolina
Clemson Rural Health (CRH) received $7.7 million from the South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH) to implement the Maternal Care Access Project
“They Pushed Him Back Inside Me”: “Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air” Star Tatyana Ali Has Shared Her Horrifying Birth Story While Speaking Out Against Racial Bias In Maternal Health
“It's an incredibly dangerous thing that they did; they could have snapped his neck; this is after hours of them holding me down.”
A Dangerous Shift in Maternal Health Policy
The Trump administration is cutting the budget in ways that put the lives of pregnant women and babies at risk, write Stephanie Psaki, Dara Kass, and Liz Tobin-Tyler.
Five ways MSU is redefining public health through community power
Explore how Michigan State University is improving community health in Flint through innovation in maternal care, nutrition, and health equity.
Lawmakers urged by AHA to support key health initiatives in FY 2027 appropriations bill
The AHA April 29 urged House and Senate appropriations committee leaders to fund health care programs that have been successful in improving access to care for patients and communities nationwide, as the committee begins drafting the fiscal year 2027 appropriations bills. The AHA encouraged Congress to support various programs focusing on the health care workforce, maternal and child health, rural health, disaster preparedness, medical research and behavioral health. Additionally, the AHA urged legislators to include specific bill language that would bar the use of funds for the implementation of a 340B Rebate Model Program at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Exploring effects of climate change on maternal health
A two-day symposium earlier this month at UC Riverside convened academic researchers, activists, government officials and leaders from nonprofit organizations to explore the effects of climate change on maternal and reproductive health as well as strategies for mitigating the risks.
Improving maternal and infant health is the goal of new program at a Long Island hospital
Study: Higher Maternal Death Rate in States With Abortion Bans | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Findings point to potential 9% rise in pregnancy-associated and pregnancy-related mortality
Brooklyn College Hosts Urgent Discussion on Black Maternal Health Crisis
The event, attended by students, faculty, staff, and community members, was held in conjunction with the 2026 Perinatal Mental Health Summit at the Greg Jackson Center for Brownsville.
Voices: Disparities in maternal health
t’s Minority Health Month and Jawan sits down with a mother who survived preeclampsia. Her story plus the importance of health advocacy for women of color.
Spanberger signs bills to improve maternal health care in Virginia
Gov. Abigail Spanberger on Wednesday signed a bipartisan package of bills aimed at improving maternal health care and expanding support for mothers.
Mara Brock Akil And Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove Share How Storytelling Shapes Black Maternal Health
On Saturday, April 18, In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda brought together elected officials, TV and film writers, creators, and community leaders for a powerful conversation unpacking how media narratives can impact policy.
State Action to Improve Maternal & Child Health with the Rural Health Transformation Program: Virtual Convening of Milbank State Leadership Network Recap
Event Date: March 27, 2026 Introduction The Milbank State Leadership Network hosted a virtual session for state legislators and executive
U.S. Delivers Maternal Health Equipment Across Madagascar - U.S. Embassy in Madagascar
U.S. Delivers Maternal Health Equipment Across Madagascar U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Stephanie Arnold today provided critical maternal and newborn health equipment that will reach healthcare facilities across Madagascar, demonstrating how U.S. foreign assistance builds a safer, healthier world by helping recipient countries build self-reliant health systems in line with the America First Global Health Strategy. Under President Trump’s America First foreign assistance policy and the America First Global Health Policy, U.S. support serves as a tool of strategic engagement – not global charity. Every U.S. taxpayer dollar is subject to rigorous oversight to ensure measurable results, maximum efficiency, and accountability, with zero tolerance for fraud, waste, or abuse. Through the bilateral Global Health Memorandum of Understanding with Madagascar’s Ministry of Public Health, both governments agreed on shared priorities and responsibilities, including a strong focus on maternal and newborn health and Madagascar’s increasing co-investment in its own health system. Madagascar continues to face major challenges in maternal and newborn health, including high maternal mortality rates and significant gaps in access to quality delivery care. In rural regions, many women still give birth at home or in facilities without adequate infection-prevention supplies. Through the U.S.-funded Momentum Country and Global Leadership Project, the United States is providing essential equipment to healthcare facilities nationwide: calibrated reusable drapes for infection prevention in approximately 1,000 community health centers (CSBs), single-use calibrated drapes for 35 hospitals, and management tools for health workers to improve data collection and care coordination. “U.S. foreign assistance makes America safer by preventing instability and strengthening health systems that can detect and contain infectious diseases before they cross borders,” said Chargé d’Affaires Arnold during the handover ceremony. “Our support is temporary and targeted, designed to help Madagascar build greater self-reliance and reduce long-term dependence on U.S. taxpayer resources.” This U.S. support will help standardize safe delivery practices, strengthen infection prevention, and improve data management systems. Used effectively, these materials will contribute directly to reducing maternal and newborn deaths, especially in rural and hard-to-reach areas where access to quality delivery care remains limited. From major hospitals to remote health centers, U.S.-funded equipment is already delivering results. The nationwide scope of this support ensures that women and newborns across Madagascar benefit from improved infection prevention and safer delivery practices. This targeted assistance helps save lives today while supporting Madagascar’s transition toward a self-sufficient health system, ensuring that today’s U.S. support leads to Madagascar’s future independence from foreign assistance.
Lawmakers pressed to address Black maternal health disparities
Advocates pushed Michigan lawmakers to address racial differences in maternal healthcare this week. The activism is part of Black Maternal Health Week.
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
KAPAAW hosts fifth annual Black Maternal Health Fair
The event was an opportunity to connect Lexington mothers with resources to make motherhood easier.
Inside the Shapiro administration’s ‘absolutely ambitious’ plan to prevent maternal deaths in Pennsylvania
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and...
Bay Area doctor highlights health inequities for Black pregnant women
Friday marks the end of Black Maternal Health Week, and Bay Area doctors are sharing where progress is still needed to help fix disparities in healthcare for Black pregnant women.
Mayor Mamdani attends Black Maternal Health Week event in Brooklyn
Hospitals Help: Bronson Drives Change in Maternal and Infant Health
From prenatal care and labor and delivery to neonatal intensive care and postpartum follow-up, Bronson Healthcare plays a critical role in influencing health outcomes for mothers and babies across Southwest Michigan. In celebrating a historic reduction in Black infant mortality across Kalamazoo County, Bronson acknowledged that creating change requires shared…
Healthcare disparities at the forefront during Black Maternal Health Week, as one AZ mother shares her journey
Experts say most pregnancy-related deaths are preventable, but gaps in care and communication continue to put Black women at higher risk.
Reps. Adams, Underwood and Sen. Booker Introduce Black Maternal Health Week Resolution
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Congresswomen Alma Adams, Ph.D. (D-NC-12) and Lauren Underwood (D-IL-14), along with U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), introduced the bicameral resolution recognizing April 11 through April 17 as Black Maternal Health Week.
First-time mom, doula share experience amid Black Maternal Health Week
United States and Madagascar Discuss Five-Year Health MOU Implementation Plan - U.S. Embassy in Madagascar
United States and Madagascar Discuss Five-Year Health MOU Implementation Plan The United States and Madagascar’s Ministry of Public Health are in the process of developing a plan for implementing the U.S.-Madagascar five-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on health cooperation, signed under the Trump Administration’s America First Global Health Strategy. The two-day workshop, at the U.S. Embassy in Antananarivo, brought together technical experts and senior leadership from the Malagasy and U.S. governments to discuss a shared vision through a preliminary draft MOU Implementation Plan and to establish the joint governance structures that will guide U.S. foreign assistance in health over the next five years. The jointly decided bilateral health MOU, signed on December 22, 2025, builds on decades of U.S. global health assistance to Madagascar. The health MOU involves the U.S.’s plans, working with Congress, to provide approximately $134 million (over 554 billion Ariary) and a Malagasy commitment of $41 million (over 169 billion Ariary). It aims to strengthen Madagascar’s health system, improve disease prevention and response, and support services that address health security concerns for both countries, including malaria, maternal and child health, polio, and global health security issues that could reach U.S. shores if not contained at their source. During the recent workshop, technical staff from the Ministry of Public Health and the U.S. Government health team worked in thematic groups to draft detailed implementation plans for the five-year MOU period. On the second day, U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Stephanie Arnold and Ministry of Public Health and Economic and Finance Ministry leadership joined the technical teams to discuss plans and proposed terms of reference for two committees: a Joint Steering Committee and an Operational Committee. These structures will ensure clear roles and responsibilities, regular dialogue between the two governments, consistent monitoring of progress, and accountability for results. The framework includes performance benchmarks that will guide continued U.S. support and track Madagascar’s progress toward self-reliance. “We see this not as a U.S. project, but as a joint framework under Malagasy leadership, with U.S. support,” said U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Stephanie Arnold during the workshop’s opening session. The approach reflects U.S. foreign assistance principles that emphasize strategic, results-driven support that advances American interests while helping recipient countries build sustainable health systems. The framework is designed to build systems that Madagascar will increasingly finance and lead itself, reducing long-term dependence on foreign assistance.
City leaders and advocates address disparities in Black maternal health
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco policy leaders and community advocates are marking Black Maternal Health Week with a focus on improving outcomes for Black families. The event at City Hall high…
Houston midwife says access to care, systemic racism drive Black maternal deaths; urges prenatal visits
A certified nurse midwife with Ben Taub Hospital says barriers to basic health care along with systemic racism continue to fuel disproportionate maternal deaths among Black women in Harris County, even as Houston sits in the shadow of one of the world’s largest medical centers.
Rooted in Justice and Joy: What Black Maternal Health Demands of Us Right Now
Visit the post for more.
Black Maternal Health Week: PRH in Action
PRH highlights Black Maternal Health Week 2026, addressing pregnancy criminalization, racial inequities, and solutions for equitable care.
Governor Stein Recognizes Black Maternal Health Week
Today Governor Josh Stein joined Senator Natalie Murdock, the Legislative Black Caucus, and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to…
Event Friday for Black Maternal Health Week
There is an event Friday for Black Maternal Health Week.
Support Black Maternal Health Week through donations
Diapers and wipes are being collected until April 17
Open house in Chicago will focus on improving Black maternal health
Northwestern Medicine provides guidance for improving Black maternal health
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says more than 80% of deaths related to pregnancy are preventable, and Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.
The hidden health inequality facing even the wealthiest Black mothers
Khiara Bridges took on Josh Hawley. Now she’s taking on the maternal healthcare system.
Mental health deaths may be missed in maternal data
Suicides and overdoses may be undercounted in maternal deaths, limiting awareness.
Working at the Grassroots Level: A Qualitative Exploration of Frontline Health Workers’ Experiences in Tribal Maternal and Reproductive Health Services
Background Frontline health workers play a crucial role in bridging gaps between health systems and marginalized communities. However, there is limited evidence of their experiences within tr...
The Movement Turns Ten. Black Mothers Are Still Fighting. Blood Donors Can Help.
Black Maternal Health Week turns 10. Dr. Monique Rainford on the maternal mortality crisis and how blood donors can help. #BMHW26 #NationalMinorityHealthMonth
Black Maternal Health Week: The impact of racism and how patients can advocate for themselves
It’s Black Maternal Health Week. Storm Team4’s Jessica Faith spoke with Dr. Tamika Auguste about the impact of implicit bias and structural racism on outcomes for Black mothers and how patients can advocate for themselves.
Educate, empower, and advocate: Mercy Medical Center midwife discusses Black Maternal Health Week
Mercy Medical Center midwife Kia Hollis joins Jenyne Donaldson to discuss Black Maternal Health Week.
Black Maternal Health Week highlights disparities, solutions at Hampton Roads conference
Held as part of the national awareness week from April 11 to 17, the conference brought together doctors, nurses, social workers and midwife advocates to address inequities in maternal health care and outcomes.
Michigan group spotlights Black Maternal Health Week and the risks Black women face giving birth
Black women are 3 to 4 times more likely than their white counterparts to die of childbirth-related complications. The disparity is unchanged even when factoring in education and income.
Black doulas work to bridge health disparities for Black mothers
Saturday marked Global Black Doula Day and the start of Black Maternal Health Week. Pregnant and postpartum parents gathered on the West Side for a community baby shower.
Columbus organization hosts free Black maternal health expo
The Columbus, Georgia Chapter of Jack & Jill of America held its first-ever Black Maternal Health Expo this morning at Comer Gym.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
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