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Where is the money for stillbirths?

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During this event, speakers will discuss two new papers published in The Lancet Global Health  around donor and research funding for stillbirths – highlighting gaps and opportunities to drive more investment and accountability in funding for stillbirths. 

Speakers

Joy Lawn, LSHTM

Joy Lawn, LSHTM 

Paula Quigley, International Stillbirth Alliance 
Paula Quigley

Paula Quigley is a medical doctor with over 30 years of experience in designing, managing and evaluating reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, & adolescent health and nutrition programmes. She has worked in South and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. She is currently the Facility Director of the Nutrition Action for Systemic Change Project with DAI Global, a Technical Assistance facility for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the UK Government. She was the Secretary of the ISA Board from July 2019 and took over as the Chair in September 2022. 

Eva Loucaides, Paediatrician
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Eva works as a Paediatrician in London. She has a PhD in Virology and is interested in global child and especially newborn health. She has worked with a variety of teams investigating how to best support small and vulnerable newborns in the neonatal period and beyond and has a particular interest in the impact of common newborn conditions on the developing brain. She is also the founder and co-chair of the London REACH research network through which she coordinates multi-site projects and creates opportunities for UK non-consultant doctors to ask and answer relevant clinical questions. 

Grace Mwashigadi, Public health expert and researcher
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Grace Mwashigadi is a seasoned public health expert and researcher in Kenya. She has been involved in research design, implementation and analysis of Maternal and Child Health with a strong passion for maternal and newborn health with a particular focus on quality of care in stillbirth.

Her passion for improving the quality of care in stillbirth is rooted in her personal experience of the devastating impact that the loss of a baby can have on families and communities. She understands that stillbirth is a complex issue with multifaceted causes and is committed to working towards solutions that can reduce the incidence of stillbirth and improve the care provided to families affected by it in low-resource settings.

Grace has been involved in reviewing and contributing to the forward section of the Global Stillbirth Advocacy and Implementation Guide through the International Stillbirth Alliance. The guide was launched at the International Maternal Newborn Health Conference (IMNHC) on May 11, 2023. She also participated in a panel discussion at the conference during the launch where she shared her insights on the challenges of implementing the guide in low-resource settings. 

Susannah Hopkins Leisher, University of Utah, co-chair Stillbirth Advocacy Working group 
Susannah Hopkins Leisher

Susannah Hopkins Leisher has a doctorate in epidemiology from Columbia University. She is a research assistant professor at the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Utah Health, where she is working to launch the first center of excellence for stillbirth prevention and support in the United States. She is an honorary research fellow and member of the Steering Committee of the Stillbirth Centre for Research Excellence at the Mater Research Institute of the University of Queensland, Australia; outgoing chair of the International Stillbirth Alliance; co-chair of the Stillbirth Advocacy Working Group; and a member of the Steering Committee of AlignMNH, MFMU Network’s Community Advisory Board, the Every Newborn Action Plan/Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality Management Team, and the Chief Investigators group for ARPAN, a new maternal and newborn health center of excellence for the Asia/Pacific region, based at the Burnet Institute, Australia. Her research interests include structural racism, epigenetic mechanisms of effect, and stillbirth. Dr Leisher spent over 20 years working on global poverty alleviation in Asia, Africa and Central America, including ten years in Vietnam. Most importantly, Dr Leisher is the mother of Wilder Daniel, stillborn at 38½ weeks on July 13, 1999, with no cause found.

Meghan Kumar, LSHTM

Meghan Kumar, LSHTM

Samantha Palmer, MRC-UKRI
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Samantha Palmer has been working with the Medical Research Council for 15 years, mainly in grant processing and financial budgeting. Her current interests are global maternal and neonatal health and recently global nutrition.   

Moderator

Hannah Blencowe, LSHTM

Event notices

  • Please note that you can join this event in person or you can join the session remotely.
  • Please note that the recording link will be listed on this page when available.
     

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Admission
Free and open to all. No registration required.

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