New Mexico is one of a few states with large geographical challenges for those able to access maternal and child services. Pregnant mothers, newborns and families living in rural, tribal, and underserved communities face barriers accessing appropriate healthcare putting themselves and/or their loved ones at risk for further health disparities. Understanding the need to support and maintain positive health outcomes, professionals have taken on a hybrid approach to provide both in-person visits and telehealth visits. “The need to provide maternal and child health (MCH) education in the state was the impetus for developing a graduate certificate in maternal and child public health” (Tollestrup et al., 2022, p. S3). Why is this so important? The larger the land coverage, the more difficult it is to hire and maintain medical personnel. “Other barriers to access include general provider shortage, lack of affordable insurance, and having to travel long distances for routine and specialty care” (Tollestrup et al., 2022, p. S4). Increased support is needed for specialty care such as maternal and child health and more. Providing hybrid opportunities for those individuals and families living in rural or frontier lands creates a steppingstone for healthier outcomes overall.

Reference:

Tollestrup, K., Thomas, T. L., Stone, N., Chambers, S., Sedillo, P., Perry, F., & Forster-Cox, S. (2022). The development of a Team-Based, hybrid inter-university graduate certificate program focused on maternal child health professionals. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 26(S1), 3–9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-022-03455-w

Resources:

New Mexico Dept. of Health-Maternal and Child Health Epidemiology Program

https://www.nmhealth.org/about/phd/fhb/mche/

Share New Mexico

https://sharenm.org/new-mexico-maternal-child-health-program

New Mexico Perinatal Collaborative

https://nmperinatalcollaborative.com/

Overcoming and adapting to generational trauma from genocide, colonization to present day gender-based violence, Indigenous communities have made efforts to combat violence against native people nationwide. Ongoing focus related to awareness and prevention for the overlooked gender-based violence among Indigenous women and girls is the focus of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement. MMIW brings to light ethos of personal stories and experiences aiming to protect those vulnerable to poverty, domestic violence, addiction, trafficking and misplaced foster care placement. MMIW utilized digital crowd maps as a platform to assist in raising awareness about this cycle of violence among Indigenous communities. Research has identified “ethos of Indigenous data sovereignty, or self-determination in data collection and application, that interrogates settler data procedures relative to gender violence” (Miner, 2020, p. 1). What is crowd mapping? Crowd mapping collects and shares geographical or spatial information with the help from a large group of individuals or contributors. Identification for the women missing among native people was collected via social media campaigns such as #ImNotNext and #RedDressProject to critique datasets of government agencies. Research found that “networked structures that bind tactical crowdmapping and locative media come together in the informative image, with the potential to disrupt settler cartographic practice. They rely on user engagement with a relational data set to critique the relationship between violence, biased data and space through various methods of layering, compositing and linking” (Miner, 2020, p. 15). Why does this matter? Gender-based violence among Indigenous communities is overlooked, misidentified and government data sources are inaccurate. Along with MMIW, justice needs to be sought and addressed systemically.

Reference:
Miner, J. D. (2020). Informatic tactics: Indigenous activism and digital cartographies of gender-based violence. Information, Communication & Society, 25(3), 431–448. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2020.1797851

Resources:

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women USA

https://mmiwusa.org/

Human Trafficking Capacity Building Center

https://htcbc.ovc.ojp.gov/mmip

New Mexico Indian Affairs Department

https://www.iad.state.nm.us/policy-and-legislation/missing-murdered-indigenous-women-relatives/

Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women

https://www.csvanw.org/mmiw/

National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center

https://www.niwrc.org/