Pregnant women and new mothers in Afghanistan now have a mobile phone service that provides information they can use to care for their babies and themselves.

In Indonesia, mentoring, performance feedback and motivation are improving the quality of maternal and newborn services in primary health care centers.

Dr. Lathrop, an ob-gyn, educator and researcher, has more than 20 years of experience in global health, including supporting safe cesarean section for women in Afghanistan, designing a person-centered approach to integrated maternal health and family planning in West Africa and testing the impact of HPV DNA self-sampling in Mozambique.

Perinatal mental health should be a core element in addressing maternal and neonatal survival and well-being given the unique considerations of the perinatal period, the urgency of the global maternal mortality crisis, and the mental health crisis and its treatment gap, which is as high as 90% in many low- and middle-income countries.