Kristen Herlosky

KRISTEN HERLOSKY, then a graduate student at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada, was awarded funding in April 2021 to aid research on “Maternal Health in the Context of Social, Political, and Economic Change among Hadza foragers of Tanzania,” supervised by Dr. Alyssa Crittenden. Current maternal healthcare inequities of Indigenous peoples have largely been attributed to the failures of global health initiatives because they are designed to maximize the benefit of majority populations, but often cause more harm than good for minority and historically marginalized communities. Throughout Tanzania, a lower-middle income East African nation, birth location has been described as a leading cause of maternal mortality. Policy initiatives throughout the country have recognized the severity of maternal health complications and placed maternal mortality rate (MMR) reduction as a primary goal for the nation’s progress. The Hadzabe of Tanzania are a rural, Indigenous foraging community who give birth at home with traditional birth attendants and have poor access to biomedical medicine. Several Tanzanian policy initiatives, including outlawing home birth and mandating birth registration, have been created to improve maternal and infant health outcomes, however, how these laws impact rural and indigenous communities has yet to be studied. Funding for this study was used to investigate childbirth and postpartum experiences among Hadzabe mothers and discover what access, if any, mothers have to biomedical clinics and hospitals. Qualitative interviews and surveys were collected in ten camps across the Lake Eyasi region. Preliminary findings suggest that most mothers are giving birth at home and prefer to do so, but emergent cesarean sections happen if mothers can make it to hospitals in a timely manner. Women are also unable to register their children for birth registration, and most had never even heard of the policy and how it benefits their children. With most births still happening at home, and few children registered with the government, the Hadzabe remain a vulnerable rural population with respect to maternal healthcare access. The findings from this study can inform our understanding of cross-cultural experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period and assist with designing culturally appropriate and high-quality maternal health care policies.