Deborah Maine

Deborah Maine is a US public health expert, epidemiologist and Professor of International health. UNFPA has credited her and her advocacy for better maternal health care as having helped save millions of lives. She directed the Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program (AMDD), which doubled the capacity for emergency obstetric care in several places in West Africa.

Life Maine studied anthropology at university, and began her career working with Margaret Mead at the Museum of Natural History, New York. She later turned to public health and epidemiology, and worked together with Allan Rosenfield within the field of international health to make sure that mothers are not left behind in the efforts to save children. In 1985, Maine and Rosenfield published the article Maternal Mortality – A Neglected Tragedy: Where is the M in MCH? in The Lancet, an article that drew attention to deaths of women in the third-world in pregnancy and childbirth. Their work helped give global attention to preventable maternal death. According to UNFPA, her advocacy for better maternal health care and access to emergency obstetric care might have saved millions of lives.

Maine has worked with women's reproductive health for thirty years, and during most of these years at the School of Public Health at Columbia University. Her main academic focus has been maternal morbidity and mortality. Between 1987 and 2005 Maine directed two international programs: The Prevention of Maternal Mortality Program, funded by the Carnegie Foundation, and The Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program (AMDD), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.