Bob Graham Center for Public Service

Childbirth and reproduction are some of our most pressing public policy and political issues. No aspect is more compelling than the world’s unacceptably high rate of maternal mortality. Each day more than 800 women will die during or following pregnancy and childbirth. Surprisingly, the rate is increasing in the United States as well.

Join us Friday, Oct. 29, from 11 am – 1 pm for From the global to local – a look at maternal health in Tanzania and Florida, as we hear from three medical anthropologists who have studied the historical, social and political processes involved in saving women’s lives at home and abroad.

Guest speakers include:

	Megan Cogburn Megan Cogburn is a doctoral candidate in the UF Anthropology Department and a Graham Center Graduate Dissertation Completion Fellow. For more than a decade, Megan Cogburn has been involved in immersive research to examine access to maternal health care for women in rural communities in Tanzania. She hopes her research results will address the causes of the slow progress and offer sustainable public policy solutions for how to better care for pregnant women and mothers, as well as the nurses who dedicate their lives to public service yet are often overlooked in global policy debates. Cogburn is a native of Venice, Florida, and graduated summa cum laude from Wheaton College in 2010 with a B.A. degree in anthropology. She has been volunteering, working and conducting health-related research in Tanzania supported by the Foreign Language and Areas Studies fellowship in Swahili; a research fellowship with the Transparency for Development Project, jointly-run through the University of Washington, Harvard Ash Center and the global nonprofit Results for Development; the University of Florida International Center and the Fulbright-Hays Program; and the CLAS Dissertation Fellowship.
	Dr. Meredith Marten Meredith Marten is an assistant professor of anthropology (medical anthropology) at the University of West Florida. She received a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Michigan State University, a master’s in anthropology from Florida State University, a master’s in public health (international health and development) from Tulane University, and a doctorate in medical anthropology from the University of Florida. Marten is a cultural and medical anthropologist whose work on HIV prevention programs in East Africa led to more current research on women's health and maternal mortality. Her primary research interests include equity in access to HIV and maternal health services in Tanzania and northwest Florida, focusing on how volatility in donor aid and health policy affects the health and well-being of women living in poverty.
	Dr. Adrienne E. Strong Adrienne Strong, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida, is a medical anthropologist who specializes in hospital ethnography. Dr. Strong examines the social environments of health institutions, care practices, and East African healthcare workers’ lifeworlds and everyday ethical negotiations. Inspired to begin studying hospitals in Tanzania after witnessing an autopsy of a woman who had died in childbirth in a regional hospital, Dr. Strong has worked in three different regions of the country on projects related to maternal health and mortality, the nursing profession, everyday ethics, and health bureaucracy. Her 2020 book, Documenting Death: Maternal Mortality and the Ethics of Care in Tanzania, is the first full-length anthropological exploration of maternal mortality from the perspective of healthcare providers. Dr. Strong received her Ph.D. in anthropology in 2017 jointly from Washington University in St. Louis and the Universiteit van Amsterdam in the Netherlands and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Attendees will have the chance to interact with panelists and hear about their first-hand experiences conducting field research on maternal health in Florida and Tanzania. The discussion will also touch on why women do not get access to the care they need, as well as sustainable public policy solutions that can be enacted to save lives. The program is free and open to all. Lunch is provided.

RSVP at this link.