Leadership in maternity care: Insights from an international panel
To mark International Day for Maternal Health and Rights, we brought together a panel of global experts to explore how hospital leaders can prioritize maternity care and drive meaningful change within their institutions. Their message was clear: strong, strategic leadership is essential to deliver safer, more equitable, and high-quality care for mothers and newborns.
The discussion focused on overcoming challenges, improving patient outcomes, while exploring the strategic, managerial, and political dimensions of leadership in maternity care.
Key takeaways from the conversation
1. The role of leadership in transforming maternity care
Hospital leaders shape the vision and culture of their institutions. They play a pivotal role in setting the direction for maternity care services and allocating the resources needed to make meaningful change.
“By aligning leadership strategies with strong policy implementation, hospital leaders can create a safer, more equitable, and patient-centred maternity care system.” – Vera Vertessen
Ensuring that maternity services receive adequate investment and attention is critical in achieving better outcomes for mothers and newborns.
“It starts from clinical leadership, and it goes all the way up to the board, which has to decide where resources are prioritized.” – Adolfo Llinás
2. Addressing disparities in maternal health
Access to maternity care remains unequal in many parts of the world. The discussion highlighted the importance of equity in maternity care.
“We wanted to remove cost, direct cost specifically as a barrier to access to care, which we have achieved. And our women can now access free health services in our hospital.” – Dr Khoza
Hospital leaders were also encouraged to use data-driven approaches to identify disparities and implement targeted interventions.
“The hospital leader should communicate with frontline staff. For example, for postpartum haemorrhage, data analysis is very important to understand the reasons behind. It’s key to understand how to translate the research findings into actual clinical practice.” – Dr Leung
3. Addressing quality of life and mental health
Quality of life was also mentioned as one of the biggest challenges at this moment. Experts shared how in Europe, it’s currently a major topic. While in other countries and in other environments, there are a lot of other challenges to be addressed before this.
“The quality of life is something that came up in the last five years and showed us that a lot of high-risk pregnancies were due because of this. The state (Belgium) has decided to focus on that, to assure that the quality of life is taken into account when we follow pregnant women.” – Vera Vertessen
Dr Leung shared that they developed a screening tool to evaluate mental health after giving birth.
“Maternal mortality is very important but today, the critical bulk of the problem is the mental health.” – Dr Leung
4. Investing in workforce and infrastructure
Besides the burden of mental health, in low and lower-middle income settings there’s also the burden of lack of resources.
“We don’t have the health workforce, so for us, it’s not even just about finding the issues which we do find, and you can have the data. It’s also, how do you then intervene?” – Dr Khoza
Dr Khoza also shared how at their facility, they are at risk of losing their psychiatry services because of the number of psychiatrists that have resigned. Strategies such as mentorship programmes, interdisciplinary training, and improved working conditions were discussed as solutions. A skilled, well-supported workforce and appropriate infrastructure are key to delivering quality maternity care.
“Once you make a decision at the board level, it has to align with your mission. The next step is building the right infrastructure and healthcare teams.” – Adolfo Llinás
It is a very painstaking work of alignment of mission, leadership, healthcare team, infrastructure and then the metrics to be able to function within a network.
A call to action for hospital leaders
As healthcare systems worldwide continue to evolve, hospital leaders must take proactive steps to ensure that maternity care remains a top priority.
As part of the WHO’s World Health Day 2025 campaign “Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures”, there’s a clear message: health systems must evolve to manage the full range of maternal and newborn health challenges. These go beyond obstetric complications and include mental health, noncommunicable diseases, and family planning.
Hospital leaders are in a unique position to respond. They must drive significant improvements in maternity care, ensuring that every mother and baby receives the highest standard of care possible.
