ASU students strategize solutions to improve maternal health outcomes

Climate change is disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations around the world, including pregnant and nursing women whose access to health care can be disrupted by drought, flooding and food insecurity.

Effie Agero and John Stuart, two graduate students from Arizona State University, are exploring ways to address those challenges and improve maternal health outcomes in Africa.

“Climate change is already affecting how people live across the world, but the impact is not felt equally,” Agero said. “In many parts of the Global South, and especially in arid and semi-arid regions, those effects show up in very immediate ways. It shapes everyday life, from access to food and water to how people move and access basic services.”

Agero and Stuart, both in the global technology and development graduate program in ASU’s Rob Walton College of Global Futures, are applying their classroom learning to this real-world challenge through the Future 17 program.

Future 17 is an international initiative in collaboration with Global Futures and the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom that empowers students to gain hands-on experience addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Taught by Mary Jane Parmentier, deputy director and clinical professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, the three-credit Future 17 course will be offered again in fall 2026 and spring 2027 as FIS 494 and GTD 598 and is open to all undergraduate and graduate students. 

Agero and Stuart worked with Sustainable Development Solutions Network Youth to develop sustainable, climate-resilient strategies for enhancing maternal health in Africa. 

“The goal of our project was to move beyond just identifying problems and actually propose solutions that could work in that context,” Agero shared. “We developed a climate-resilient maternity framework built around three main ideas: strengthening local health systems, improving nutrition and economic support, and involving young people in community health efforts.”

In addition to responsible innovation, the students employed the idea of "Principled Innovation" — one of ASU’s design principles — in their project.

“Principled Innovation added another layer to that thinking. It pushed us to consider values more deliberately — things like empathy, fairness, and understanding the context in which people live,” Agero said. “It also emphasized working with communities rather than designing for them, which changes how you approach a problem completely.”

As students attending an online course and completing this project virtually, Agero and Stuart took care to craft locally relevant solutions. 

“Building solutions around the actual lives of women in northeastern Kenya, rather than assumptions about them, is what makes the difference between a program that looks good on paper and one that actually works,” Stuart said. 

The challenges faced by Global South countries cannot be solved by blanket solutions developed in the Global North. 

“It is unrealistic to assume that a technical intervention or Western model will automatically translate effectively in a different context,” Stuart expanded. “International development requires a deeper understanding of the human side of a problem, the cultural context and the importance of earning trust within a community.”

Addressing the challenges of maternal health is a critical example of the transdisciplinary nature of sustainability and the need to collaborate across disciplines to implement impactful solutions. 

“Working on maternal health in northeastern Kenya made it clear that these challenges are shaped by multiple, connected factors,” said Agero. “Maternal health is not just about access to health care. It is influenced by climate conditions, infrastructure, economic realities and social dynamics, all interacting at the same time.”