EMC Press Room

About Every Mother Counts

Every Mother Counts is a campaign to end preventable deaths caused by pregnancy and childbirth around the world. Every Mother Counts informs, engages, and mobilizes new audiences to take action to improve the health and well-being of girls and women worldwide.

About NO WOMAN, NO CRY

For hundreds of thousands of women each year, pregnancy is a death sentence. Shockingly, nearly all maternal deaths and disabilities could be prevented. NO WOMAN, NO CRY is a gripping documentary that tells the personal stories of pregnant women and their caregivers in four countries as they try to avoid adding to these troubling statistics.

The film puts audiences in the footsteps of a Maasai woman in labor who must walk five miles to a clinic with no electricity, a young pregnant woman in the slums of Bangladesh too ashamed to seek out care, a pregnant OB in Guatemala who helps women who have suffered from botched illegal abortions, and a midwife in central Florida who treats uninsured women who are denied appointments elsewhere.

NO WOMAN, NO CRY premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival and made it’s US TV premiere on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network in 2011. It is currently being broadcasted around the world in over 120 countries.

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Twitter: @CTurlington, @ETThornton, @everymomcounts

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Bios:

CHRISTY TURLINGTON BURNS

Founder, Every Mother Counts; Director/Producer, NO WOMAN, NO CRY; Global Maternal Health Advocate, Mom, Model

Christy Turlington Burns is the founder of Every Mother Counts, an advocacy and mobilization to increase education and support for maternal mortality reduction globally. In 2010, Christy directed and produced “No Woman, No Cry”, a documentary film about the global state of maternal health. Prior to her work as a global maternal health advocate, Christy focused her activism on smoking prevention and cessation after losing her father to lung cancer in 1997. She collaborated on several public health service campaigns and launched an award-winning website, SmokingIsUgly.com in 2002. Christy is also an avid yogi and merged her love of the practice and writing to author her first book, Living Yoga: Creating A Life Practice (Hyperion 2002). She also founded two successful lifestyle brands; Sundãri, an Ayurvedic skincare line and nuala, a yoga inspired apparel and accessories line.

Christy is an advisor to the Harvard Medical School Global Health Council and the Harvard School of Public Health Board of Dean’s Advisors, Mother’s Day Every Day and the White Ribbon Alliance. She has contributed writings to Marie Claire Magazine, Yoga Journal and Teen Vogue along with contributions to the Huffington Post, BlogHer, MomsRising, Canada’s Globe and Mail and the UK’s Evening Standard. She has guest corresponded on NBC’s Today Show, which included reporting on the status of girl’s education in Afghanistan and an interview with H.H. the Dalai Lama. Christy has a BA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Studies and is currently pursuing a MPH at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, where she lives with her husband - filmmaker Edward Burns - and their two children.

ERIN THORNTON

Executive Director, Every Mother Counts

Erin Thornton is the Executive Director for Every Mother Counts where she is responsible for guiding policy engagement, leveraging strategic partnerships and providing viewers with meaningful opportunities to learn and engage on the issue. Prior to joining EMC, Erin served as the Global Policy Director for ONE, an advocacy and campaigning organization with more than 2 million supporters dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease. A veteran of ONE and its predecessor organization, DATA, Erin was in on the ground floor of building both organizations. She merged the policy operations of the two organizations, developed flagship products including the annual DATA Report and the ONE Award and also built the trips function. In addition, she has extensive experience engaging on public health issues and translating them to campaigns and also in communicating linkages to broader developmental issues.

Before ONE, Erin was selected as a Presidential Management Fellow. In that role, she worked at the United States Export-Import Bank as a country risk analyst for sub-Saharan Africa and at the U.S. State Department in the International Health Affairs office. Erin is a phi beta kappa graduate of Duke University with a double major in Comparative Area Studies and History. She received her master’s degree in International Relations from Yale University. Erin has travelled extensively throughout Africa, and has studied in Zimbabew and South Africa.

Press Releases:

EVERY MOTHER COUNTS AWARDS INAUGURAL U.S. GRANT TO COMMONSENSE CHILDBIRTH MIDWIFERY CLINIC, LED BY JENNIE JOSEPH

Grant Will Support Prenatal Care Visits and Prenatal Education for Low-Income and Uninsured Women in Central Florida

NEW YORK, NY – May 12, 2013

Every Mother Counts (EMC), a campaign to end preventable deaths caused by pregnancy and childbirth around the world, today announced its first U.S. grant partner, Commonsense Childbirth. The grant will support life-saving measures for low-income women in Central Florida, with a grant of $633,000 providing prenatal care visits for pregnant women and prenatal education classes – which are crucial for preventing complications and deaths related to childbirth. Despite being the richest country in the world, the U.S. ranks 50^th in the world for maternal mortality – the worst of any industrialized nation.

"The U.S. has tremendous access to resources compared to women in other countries, but this hasn’t translated to a reduction in maternal mortality. Access to prenatal education and care are crucial for reducing this disparity, and Commonsense Childbirth is committed to serving women regardless of their ability to pay,” said Erin Thornton, Executive Director, Every Mother Counts. “This grant marks an important milestone in our commitment to ensuring that all women have the resources, care, and support they need, and our goal of eliminating preventable deaths that occur during pregnancy and childbirth."

EMC’s support of prenatal resources at Commonsense Childbirth marks an investment in simple yet highly effective solutions that can improve maternal and newborn health outcomes. Women who do not receive prenatal care are three to four times more likely to die than women who do, and those with high-risk pregnancies are over five times more likely to die if they do not receive prenatal care. Prenatal education has been found to be an effective and critical element of prenatal care, particularly for low-income women. EMC’s grant will support prenatal visits for patients who would otherwise not receive the minimal recommended number of visits, as well as the provision of prenatal education classes for all of the aforementioned patients.

“EMC has done incredible work around the globe, and we are thrilled to be their first U.S. partner. We are working every day to make sure that women receive the care and resources they deserve to protect their health and their babies; no one is turned away,” said Jennie Joseph of Commonsense Childbirth. “Like EMC, Commonsense Childbirth is committed to helping all moms have the pregnancy and birth of their dreams, including the most vulnerable populations.”

While Every Mother Counts will remain primarily focused on advocacy, the organization set out to raise funds from the public through events, product partnerships and individual donations so as to directly link the public to life-saving efforts on the ground. As EMC expands, it will continue to find and support the best programs worldwide, helping to improve the lives of girls and women across the globe, and will remain committed to tracking those investments on its website, www.everymothercounts.org.

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