Newborn and maternal health experts, innovators and community leaders from around the world gathered at the inaugural “Innovation for Day One” conference hosted by Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies. Conference attendees convened at Rice’s Bioscience Research Collaborative to take collective action on solving one of the most pressing global health challenges: improving maternal and newborn health in resource-limited settings.
Despite significant decreases in newborn and maternal death rates over the past few decades, over 800 women and more than 6,000 newborns still die each day from complications related to birth. In Texas alone, there has been a sharp increase in maternal mortality within the last three years. The conference, held Sept. 25-27, explored solutions that advance treatments and technologies that can save lives at the time of birth and during the first 48 hours postpartum. These first two days of life are when babies and mothers face the highest risk of death.
Access to quality health care could help prevent many of these deaths, and innovation in health care technologies, practices, policies and infrastructure can chart a path forward to meet the global sustainable development goals for maternal and newborn health.
“Maternal mortality has been stagnant since 2015, and the United States actually has the highest maternal mortality rate of any high-income country,” said Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Rice’s Malcolm Gillis University Professor, professor of bioengineering and co-director of Rice360. “This conference is about how innovation can help be part of the solution to make sure that the day of birth is a time of celebration and joy for every mother and every baby.”
The timing of the conference, just days ahead of the university’s 10-year strategic plan launch, helped underline the continuity between the mission of the Rice360 Institute and Rice’s strategic commitment to lead innovation in health and address social disparities.
Maria Oden, co-director of Rice360, director of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen and full teaching professor of bioengineering, said that effective solutions meaningfully engage the diverse actors needed for sustainable change.
“We need a holistic approach to health care innovation to ensure healthy outcomes for mothers and babies,” Oden said. “Successful health care technologies are not only easy to use and low-cost but are part of a health care system that supports their sustained use and brings together engineers, health care workers and policymakers to improve outcomes for the communities they serve. Rice360 is committed to this approach, and this conference brings together the right people who can move the needle towards improved health care systems.”
The conference also highlighted the importance of addressing local health disparities, something Rice is uniquely situated to tackle due to its location at the heart of the most diverse city in the U.S., its vicinity and collaboration with institutions in the world’s largest medical center and its unique research profile and infrastructure.
Luz Garcini, conference executive planning committee member, assistant professor of psychological sciences at Rice and a leader in community health, moderated a panel on U.S. maternal health disparities. Garcini reminded attendees that Houston is a microcosm of many of the global challenges discussed.
“We don’t always have to look across the globe to find disparities,” said Garcini, who serves as interim director of the Center for Community and Public Health at Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, faculty scholar for the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences. “Right here in our own backyards, we are facing critical issues in maternal health and health for low-income, uninsured and underinsured people. It’s also about starting at home: If we can make our home better, we can make the world better.”
Garcini’s remarks echoed one of the key recurring topics of the conference: solutions for maternal and newborn health must be rooted in the communities they serve. Even as the importance of technology as a tool for improving health equity was a focal point of discussion, Garcini warned that without inclusivity, technological innovations could widen health disparities.
“If we don’t make technology accessible and inclusive for marginalized communities, it can backfire,” she said.
Building on the conference focus, Dr. Peter Singer, former CEO of Grand Challenges Canada and an authority on global health innovation, delivered a keynote address with a candid critique of some beliefs that can cause large multilateral organizations like the World Health Organization or the United Nations to fall short of delivering real-world change. In his talk, Singer highlighted the “seven deadly sins” of innovation, calling for a shift from planning to execution.
“People are not inspired by plans; they are inspired by results,” he said.
Singer’s address served as a reminder that improving maternal and newborn health will require a commitment to scaling effective solutions, both through policy changes and on-the-ground implementation. Singer stressed the importance of local government cooperation for the success of initiatives to deploy innovative solutions to challenges that confront different communities across the globe.
As an example of a governmental collaboration success story, Singer referenced the work that Rice360 and partners in the Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies (NEST360) international alliance conducted in Malawi, where NEST360’s package of essential technologies and workforce development practices was implemented in hospitals across all of the country’s 28 districts.
Beyond the discussions, the “Innovation for Day One” conference also featured several avenues for interactive experiences, including an innovator marketplace, poster sessions and competition and sessions dedicated to immediate Kangaroo Mother Care (iKMC), where iKMC describes the practice of engaging in prolonged baby-caretaker skin-to-skin contact starting within two hours of life, which is a proven way to reduce newborn mortality.
The next “Innovation for Day One” conference is scheduled to take place Sept. 29-Oct. 1, 2026.