EDITOR’S NOTE: Ms. Fernandes is the immediate Past President and Communications Chair for the International Federation of Health Information Management Associations (IFHIMA), and will be the special guest on Talk Ten Tuesdays broadcast, today at 10 a.m. EST.
Monday, April 7 is World Health Day, with this year’s theme one that should touch all our hearts: “healthy beginnings, healthy futures.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) urges governments and the health community to accelerate efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths, and to prioritize women’s longer-term health and well-being. Families, and particularly women, need medical and mental health services for mothers, babies, and families to thrive.
This is not just a health issue; it’s an economic issue also, as boosting maternal and child health improves economies.
Health information professionals are vital to creating and analyzing the timely, accurate data that drives maternal and child health statistics. Tragically, close to 300,000 women lose their lives due to pregnancy or childbirth each year, with over 2 million babies dying in their first month of life and around 2 million more stillborn. That’s roughly one preventable death every seven seconds.
Bringing this closer to home, sadly, the U.S. has the worst maternal and child health stats in industrialized nations, at 23.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Closest to us is France, with 8.7, and Canada, with 8.6. The disparity is even worse when considering race, as Black women in the U.S. are three times more likely to die from maternal health issues as white women.
IFHIMA, the International Federation of Health Information Management Associations, founded in 1968 and a non-governmental organization (NGO) in relations with WHO for over 45 years, embraces high-quality, timely, and interoperable health data in support of our vision, “a healthy world enabled by quality health information.”IFHIMA is proud to champion global health and health data through our members from 58 nations. We are always mindful of the importance of addressing the needs of our members from low- and lower-middle income countries, where maternal and child health is particularly troublesome.
We take actions to broaden the global remit through our initiatives such as Communities of Practice, Workgroups, and whitepapers addressing education, training, and research, privacy, workforce development, and more.
No World Health Day would be complete without a mention of the importance of ICD-11 implementation, even if many of us in the U.S. believe this is a decade or more away. A total of 72 nations around the world are in various stages of adopting ICD-11.
If you’re not an IFHIMA member, or if you are interested in volunteering to assist in IFHIMA initiatives, please contact me or visit our website for details.
Let’s champion the maternal and child health theme the WHO has established for World Health Day through our personal actions and professional roles.
Listen live today when Lorraine Fernandes is the special guest on Talk Ten Tuesday with Chuck Buck and Angela Comfort at 10 Eastern.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(24)00560-6/fulltext
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