Women Health

Women's Health Innovation to Impact at UNGA81

October 15, 2026
Dr. Ndola Prata participated in a panel during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA81). "From Innovation to Impact: Reaching Every Woman" highlighted the critical shift from simply creating healthcare innovations to ensuring they actually reach, scale, and transform lives for women globally. The conversation brought together powerful insights on breaking down systemic barriers, funding gaps, and delivery challenges in women's health.

The impact of neighborhood violence on domestic femicides in Mexico: A Demonstration of the Causal Inference Roadmap

June 4, 2026

The Social Science and Medicine has published Ndola Prata's new article that she co-authored with Alma LiliaJuárez Armenta: The Impact of Neighborhood Violence on Domestic Femicides in Mexico: A Demonstration of the Causal Inference Roadmap. Please click here to read the article.

Development of a Conceptual Model and Survey Instrument to Measure Conscientious Objection to Abortion Provision

Laura Florence Harris
John Koku Awoonor-Williams
Caitlin Gerdts
Laura Gil Urbano
Ana Cristina González Vélez
Jodi Halpern
Ndola Prata
Peter Baffoe
2016

Background and objective: Conscientious objection to abortion, clinicians' refusal to perform legal abortions because of their religious or moral beliefs, has been the subject of increasing debate among bioethicists, policymakers, and public health advocates in recent years. Conscientious objection policies are intended to balance reproductive rights and clinicians' beliefs. However, in practice, clinician objection can act as a barrier to abortion access-impinging on reproductive rights, and increasing unsafe abortion and related morbidity and mortality. There is little...

Women’s Limited Choice and Availability of Modern Contraception at Retail Outlets and Public-Sector Facilities in Luanda, Angola, 2012–2015

Ndola Prata
Benjamin Nieto-Andrade
Eva Fidel
Rebecca Simmons
Dana Sievers
Anya Fedorova
Suzanne Bell
Karen Weidert
2017

In Angola, many women want to use family planning but lack access to affordable and preferred methods. This article assesses the link between women’s choice and availability of contraceptive methods in Luanda, Angola, drawing on data from 3 surveys: a 2012 survey among women ages 15–49 and 2 retail surveys conducted in 2014 and 2015 among outlets and facilities offering contraceptive methods. Descriptive statistics for women’s contraceptive knowledge, use, and preferred methods were stratified by age group. We report the percentage of establishments offering different methods and...

Making Abortion Safer in Rwanda: Operationalization of the Penal Code of 2012 to Expand Legal Exemptions and Challenges

Nuriye Nalan Sahin Hodoglugil
Fidele Ngabo
Joanna Ortega
Laetitia Nyirazinyoye
Eugene Ngoga
Evangeline Dushimeyezu
Eugene Kanyamanza
Ndola Prata
2017
Abstract

Penal code was revised in Rwanda in 2012 allowing legal termination of pregnancy resulting from rape, incest, forced marriage, or on medical grounds. An evaluation was conducted to assess women's access to abortion services as part of an ongoing program to operationalize the new exemptions for legal abortion. Data was collected from eight district hospitals; seven gender-based violence (GBV) centers and six intermediate courts. Three focus group discussions and 22 in-depth interviews were conducted with key informants. At hospitals, of the 2,644 uterine evacuation records (July...

Associations of women's position in the household and food insecurity with family planning use in Nepal

Nadia Diamond-Smith
Anita Raj
Ndola Prata
Sheri D Weiser
2017

Background: Women in Nepal have low status, especially younger women in co-resident households. Nepal also faces high levels of household food insecurity and malnutrition, and stagnation in uptake of modern family planning methods.

Objective: This study aims to understand if household structure and food insecurity interact to influence family planning use in Nepal.

Methods: Using data on married, non-pregnant women aged 15-49 with at least one child from the Nepal 2011 Demographic and Health Survey (N = 7,460), we explore the...

The impact of neighborhood violence on domestic femicides in Mexico: A demonstration of the causal inference roadmap

Alma Lilia Juárez Armenta
Ndola Prata
2026
Background The incidence of femicide, the murder of a woman for gender-based reasons, has risen significantly in recent years in Mexico, going from 427 reported victims in 2015 to 797 in 2024. Although individual-level risk factors have been studied, we aimed to study neighborhood-level factors that might be more amenable to intervention. Our study delved into the impact of municipality-level violence in Mexico on the probability of occurrence of domestic femicides at the municipality level in 2024. Methods We employed the Causal Roadmap framework for causal and statistical inference. Our...

Community-based misoprostol for the prevention of post-partum haemorrhage: A narrative review of the evidence base, challenges and scale-up

Karen Hobday
Jennifer Hulme
Suzanne Belton
Caroline SE Homer
Ndola Prata
Jennifer Hulme
2017

Achieving Sustainable Development Goal targets for 2030 will requirepersistent investment and creativity in improving access to quality healthservices, including skilled attendance at birth and access to emergencyobstetric care. Community-based misoprostol has been extensivelystudied and recently endorsed by the WHO for the prevention of post-partum haemorrhage. There remains little consolidated information aboutexperience with implementation and scale-up to date. This narrativereview of the literature aimed to identify the political processes leading toWHO endorsement of misoprostol for...

Women’s empowerment related to pregnancy and childbirth: introduction to special issue

Ndola Prata
Paula Tavrow
Ushma Upadhyay
2017

Empowerment is widely acknowledged as a process by which those who have been disempowered are able to increase their self-efficacy, make life-enhancing decisions, and obtain control over resources [1,2,...

Scaling Up Misoprostol to Prevent Postpartum Hemorrhage at Home Births in Mozambique: A Case Study Applying the ExpandNet/WHO Framework

Karen Hobday
Jennifer Hulme
Ndola Prata
Páscoa Zualo Wate
Suzanne Belton
Caroline Homer
2019

Background: Mozambique has a high maternal mortality ratio, and postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is a leading cause of maternal deaths. In 2015, the Mozambican Ministry of Health (MOH) commenced a program to distribute misoprostol at the community level in selected districts as a strategy to reduce PPH. This case study uses the ExpandNet/World Health Organization (WHO) scale-up framework to examine the planning, management, and outcomes of the early expansion phase of the scale-up of misoprostol for the prevention of PPH in 2 provinces in Mozambique.

Methods:...