This fall 2025 semester Professor Ndola Prata has six exceptional undergraduate students from the PH181 course Poverty and Population who have communicated with their United States representatives, expressing their strong arguments for contraceptives as foreign aid for USAID, comprehensive sex education in public schools, abortion pills, community protection from hunger and climate stress, food security and women's access to reproductive care. These students are Rishabh Ganesh Balamitran, Raka Bose, Alyssa Chan, Rosalie Güitrón,...
Background: It is now common to search for health information online. A 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that 77% of online health seekers began their query at a search engine. The widespread use of online health information seeking also applies to women’s reproductive health. Despite online interest in birth control, not much is known about related interests and concerns reflected in the search terms in the United States.
Objective: In this study, we identify the top search terms on Google related to birth control in Louisiana and Mississippi and compare those results to the...
With the Dobbs leak introducing uncertainty about access and the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June of 2022 overturning the US constitutional right to abortion, delays in accessing desired abortion care are likely growing longer and more common. Timely research on people’s experiences waiting to access abortion care is needed. Using data from an abortion subreddit (r/abortion), we analyzed posts that described waiting after having decided to terminate the pregnancy, either by having an in-clinic appointment or ordering medication(s) online for self-managed...
In Ghana, abortion is restricted except on a few legal grounds. About 11% of maternal deaths in Ghana are due to unsafe abortion. This study investigated the association between abortion motivation (the primary reason women sought abortion) and abortion safety.
The life course perspective has provided a grounding framework for maternal and child health (MCH) research and practice. By emphasizing the cumulative impact of social, economic, and environmental influences across the life span, the framework has informed the development of effective interventions in MCH (Bazzano et al., 2025). Although much progress has been made, there remains an opportunity to more explicitly address the unique developmental needs of maternal health during the transition to motherhood. This commentary argues that the transformative period that birthing people...
The life course perspective, while foundational to maternal and child health (MCH) research, requires refinement to explicitly address the unique developmental needs of the transition to motherhood. In this commentary, jointly written with the Wallace Center, we argue that the concept of "matrescence"—the transformative period encompassing pregnancy and postpartum—should be integrated as a critical and sensitive period within the MCH life course framework. Access the full article...
Women’s empowerment has been associated with lower fertility. Angola, a country in middle Africa has a TFR of 6.2. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether women’s empowerment in Angola is associated with fertility preferences. More...
Impact on Reproductive Health Service Delivery in Kakuma and Kalobeyei Camps during Compounded Crises: A Qualitative Study
BHAVYA JOSHI, University of California, Berkeley Ndola Prata, Bixby Center, UC Berkeley
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has reported a 4000% increase in forcibly displaced individuals from 1951 to 2020. Crises and its impacts are increasing worldwide, and a growing number of populations are being impacted by multiple events of crises - compounded crises. Populations in compounded crises settings face additional challenges...
Victoria Lee, Drexler Anthony T. Madamba, Kendy Mendoza, and Hazel Warner, undergraduate students from Ndola Prata's PH181 course, Poverty and Population, have been in touch with Congressional Representatives in Washington DC, Journalist Alisha Haridasani Gupta (New York Times) and Governor Inslee (Washington). Click hereto read the students' exceptional work!
A consensus emerged in the late 1990s among leaders in global maternal health that traditional birth attendants (TBAs) should no longer be trained in delivery skills and should instead be trained as promoters of facility-based care. Many TBAs continue to be trained in places where home deliveries are the norm and the potential impacts of this training are important to understand. The primary objective of this study was to gain a more nuanced understanding of the full impact of training TBAs to use misoprostol and a blood measurement tool (mat) for the prevention of postpartum...
