Breakfast for Global Health highlights PATH's work for mothers, newborns in India

This year’s Breakfast for Global Health, PATH’s annual fundraiser, highlighted our work to promote safe births and healthy newborns in India. Dr. Benazir Patil, PATH’s coordinator for the Sure Start Project in Maharashtra, India, was the keynote speaker for the May 20, 2008 event. Dr. Patil gave a personal account and relayed stories of mothers and children whose lives have been saved through better access to health care.

Each year, we welcome supporters to our Seattle headquarters, where we transform our parking garage into an extraordinary event venue and serve up breakfast and a brief presentation from the field. It’s an opportunity for local donors to hear firsthand how their contributions are making a difference. Read more about the Breakfast for Global Health.

The garage transformation: see it for yourself.

Through Sure Start, PATH is reducing disease and death among babies and their mothers by encouraging women and their families to use health care services, especially for birthing, and by working with them on simple, home-based interventions, such as skin-to-skin contact to keep babies warm. In Maharashtra, the project focuses on poor women living in urban slums. In Uttar Pradesh, the project is reaching remote rural villages. Read more about these efforts.

Benazir Patil, PhD, coordinates PATH’s Sure Start Project for the state of Maharashtra, India. She has more than a decade of experience in public health.

Before joining PATH in 2006, Dr. Patil worked as a social assessment specialist with a variety of emergency aid and community mobilization groups, where she addressed issues such as corporate social responsibility, gender equality, and the standard of living in rural communities affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami. Since 2004, she has worked with the World Bank on gender and social issues. She has worked with both the public and private sectors to improve health care systems.

Dr. Patil earned her PhD in public health policy from the University of Pune, India, and holds a master’s degree in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. She is fluent in English, Hindi, Marathi, and Urdu. Read more about Dr. Patil and the personal experiences that guide her work.

Posted May 20, 2008.