ArticleMedical anthropology quarterly2014
"Playing the numbers game": evidence-based advocacy and the technocratic narrowing of the Safe Motherhood Initiative.
Article in Medical anthropology quarterly, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed.
- Medicalisation, depoliticisation and reproductive stratification: lessons from Canada's Muskoka Initiative.Feminist theory · 2025Article
- Global Financing Facility investments for vulnerable populations: content analysis regarding maternal and newborn health and stillbirths in 11 African countries, 2015 to 2019.Global health action · 2024Article
- Travelling numbers and broken loops: A qualitative systematic review on collecting and reporting maternal and neonatal health data in low-and lower-middle income countries.SSM - population health · 2024Review
- Mapping maternal and infant health in Morocco: A global scoping review of themes, gaps, and the "unseen" in the published health research literature, 2000-2022.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Understanding reasons for and strategic responses to administrative health data misreporting in an Indian state.Health policy and planning · 2023Article
- Why are they "unreached"? Macro and Meso determinants of health care access in hard to reach areas of Odisha, India.International journal for equity in health · 2023Article
- A critical interpretive synthesis of power and mistreatment of women in maternity care.PLOS global public health · 2023Review
- Establishing political priority for global mental health: a qualitative policy analysis.Health policy and planning · 2022Article
- From science to sustainable systems: Evidence based-decision making for adolescent fertility in Zambia.Health policy OPEN · 2021Article
- The uses of knowledge in global health.BMJ global health · 2021Article
- A Stalled Revolution? Misoprostol and the Pharmaceuticalization of Reproductive Health in Francophone Africa.Frontiers in sociology · 2021Article
- Priority-setting to integrate sexual and reproductive health into universal health coverage: the case of Malaysia.Sexual and reproductive health matters · 2020Article
- What post-abortion care indicators don't measure: Global abortion politics and obstetric practice in Senegal.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2020Article
- Strengthening accountability of the global health metrics enterprise.Lancet (London, England) · 2020Review
- Finding "What Works": Theory of Change, Contingent Universals, and Virtuous Failure in Global Mental Health.Culture, medicine and psychiatry · 2019Article
- Advocating for evidence in birth: Proving cause, effecting outcomes, and making the case for 'curers'.Medicine anthropology theory · 2019Article
- A critical interpretive synthesis of informal payments in maternal health care.Health policy and planning · 2019Review
- Beyond the template: the needs of tribal women and their experiences with maternity services in Odisha, India.International journal for equity in health · 2018Article
- Civil society in global health policymaking: a critical review.Globalization and health · 2018Review
- Integration of maternal postpartum services in maternal and child health services in Kaya health district (Burkina Faso): an intervention time trend analysis.BMC health services research · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Based on an ethnography of the international Safe Motherhood Initiative (SMI), this article charts the rise of evidence-based advocacy (EBA), a term global-level maternal health advocates have used to indicate the use of scientific evidence to bolster the SMI's authority in the global health arena. EBA represents a shift in the SMI's priorities and tactics over the past two decades, from a call to promote poor women's health on the grounds of feminism and social justice (entailing broad-scale action) to the enumeration of much more narrowly defined practices to avert maternal deaths whose outcomes and cost effectiveness can be measured and evaluated. Though linked to the growth of an audit- and business-oriented ethos, we draw from anthropological theory of global forms to argue that EBA-or "playing the numbers game"-profoundly affects nearly every facet of evidence production, bringing about ambivalent reactions and a contested technocratic narrowing of the SMI's policy agenda.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.