Maternal Health Is Women's Health: A Call for Papers for Year 2 of the Maternal Health Task Force–PLOS Collection

The Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF) and the PLOS Medicine Editors are delighted to announce our continued collaboration to create a freely available, open access collection of outstanding research and commentary on maternal health, the MHTF–PLOS Collection on Maternal Health, with a call for papers on the theme of ‘‘maternal health is women’s health.’’ This Year 2 Collection follows the successful first year of our partnership, which generated a collection of 18 original articles on the quality of maternal health care (www.ploscollections.org/maternalhealth) and helps us further our collective goal to improve women’s and children’s health worldwide through greater access to more comprehensive maternal health information and knowledge. Our continued commitment to highlighting and pressing for more evidence on maternal health reflects the persistence of this problem around the world: while the number of maternal deaths overall is declining, Millennium Development Goal 5 (to improve maternal health) is the goal most lagging behind due to a lack of progress in a critical number of countries [1,2]. We chose the theme for Year 2 of ‘‘maternal health is women’s health’’ because it is crucial to consider maternal health in the context of women’s health throughout their lifespans. While pregnancy is limited to women of reproductive age, maternal health is influenced by the health of women and girls before pregnancy, and it also influences women’s health broadly during and after the reproductive years. Inability to access quality health care and family planning resources, low educational attainment, low socioeconomic status, restrictive gender roles, poor nutrition, and a host of other social and biological factors combine to put girls and women at risk for not being able to attain and sustain the health status they deserve throughout their lives. Key Issues in the Health of Girls and Adolescents