Growing Global

After years of hard work and getting to know the pregnant women and their support staffs in communities throughout the United States, if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that every mom wants the best for her baby.

That’s true in both in our country and abroad, and it’s why we’re so excited to be advancing our Baby Basics Program internationally through the Women’s Health Innovation Program—a groundbreaking new partnership with the U.S. State Department Office of Global Women’s Issues and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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This initiative is enabling us to expand globally and empower pregnant women around the world to become strong health advocates for themselves and their children.

Over the years, we’ve gotten really good at listening to expecting moms, hearing their stories and meeting their needs, and now, as part of our mission to educate and empower moms in need, our international program will focus on vulnerable and expectant mothers in other countries by offering evidence-based, culturally appropriate pregnancy information, education and social support to those in targeted overseas nations.

Because at the end of the day, we’re really all just moms helping moms, people helping people. And while cultures may be different, the story of motherhood is always the same.

The Big Plan

Over the next two years, our Foundation has a grant to embark on pilot Baby Basics programs in:

As we meet and start to identify the local partners and government agencies doing the work on the ground in each country, we will coordinate and support the efforts of those front-line healthcare providers and policymakers, fostering collaboration and increased capacity to help ensure that health information for pregnant women in these locales is accurate, comprehensive and readily available.

Tactically, we will:

• Create Baby Basics materials adapted for each nation
• Create a Baby Basics curriculum for each nation that teaches moms the skills and information they need to have a healthy baby
• Provide training in each country to help implement the program: helping moms access care, helping providers understand moms’ barriers to care, and coordinating communities’ efforts to help moms

By applying the overall Baby Basics principles and translating our books into relevant materials for moms in these nations, we will bolster already-existing programs and help educate women, strengthen communities, and spread the story of happy pregnancies and healthy babies in places we never before thought possible.

It’s a thrilling initiative, and we feel honored to join such a valiant effort as this to harness the power of moms, and motherhood, around the globe.