Written by Lorna Benton, PhD candidate at the UCL Institute for Global Health.

A recent Lancet meta-analysis (http://bit.ly/10Jz9Gc) demonstrated the success of women’s group interventions in significantly reducing maternal and new-born mortality rates.

Following on from this, the Institute for Global Health and the Grand Challenge for Global Health hosted a joint symposium with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, entitled ‘Community based new-born and maternal care’, to ask how such community based women’s groups could be used to deliver life-saving information and support globally.

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Shivani Singh, PhD student at the UCL Centre for International Health & Development, reports on the UCL Global Health Symposium ‘Child Maltreatment: A six-country comparison of trends’, held on 18 January.

The seminar marked the beginning of a new year of fascinating lectures hosted by the UCL Institute for Global Health.

The session was well attended and featured the work of Professor Ruth Gilbert of the UCL Institute of Child Health. Joining her as panellists were June Thoburn, Emeritus Professor from the University of East Anglia, and Richard Bartholomew, who is the joint Head of the Government Social Research service and Chief Research Officer, Children, Young People and Families Directorate, Department for Education.

The focus of Professor Gilbert’s research is to understand child maltreatment across the industrialised nations of Canada, the USA, England, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia.

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