Healthy Families, Healthy Planet

The Healthy Families, Healthy Planet initiative, funded by a grant from the United Nations Foundation, works to educate and mobilize United Methodists in the U.S. on the importance of maternal health and international family planning. Through grassroots education with targeted annual conferences and advocacy efforts with policy makers, the goal of the project is to achieve higher levels of foreign aid for international family planning through the U.S. government.

Healthy Families, Healthy Planet is a program initiative of the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society. The General Board of Church & Society has applied for a second year of funding to continue the Healthy Families, Healthy Planet project for an additional year.

Five (5) key reasons for undertaking the initiative:

  • Every minute a woman in sub-Saharan Africa dies from complications during pregnancy or childbirth. Nearly all of the annual 536,000 maternal deaths worldwide occur in the developing world.
  • More than 200 million women want to avoid pregnancy worldwide, but lack a family-planning method.
  • Investing in family planning reduces unintended pregnancy and increases health.
  • When a woman delays pregnancy at least two years after the birth of her previous child, she is much more likely to have a healthy pregnancy and birth.
  • By empowering women and men to make healthy decisions about how to space their children and determine their family size, family planning helps create healthier lives for themselves and for their children.

Read the related Social Principles and Resolutions.

 

Conference Actions:

Katey Zeh, consultant with the GBCS, presented at the 2010 Kansas East Annual Conference. In response to her presentation, the conference voted to send a letter supporting funding for international family planning to Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who is a key leader in the Senate Appropriation's Committee.

 

August 2010 Appropriations Update:

Katey Zeh reports that GBCS was successful in both the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees over the summer. The House subcommittee approved $735 million and the Senate subcommittee approved $700 milliopn for international family planning. President Barack Obama's request was for $716 million. Congress will still have to adopt these funding levels, most likely in an omnibus bill later this year.

 

Maternal Health Bible study planned:

This fall, Zeh will be working with Jill Wiley, another GBCS consultant who works on obstretic fistula, to create a two-session bible study on maternal health. Our vision is that it could be used across generations. I will give you more information as we develop what I hope will be a creative, interesting resource to use in your churches.