Inas Madhi, MPH
Vice President of Training, Practice and Evaluation at the National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC)
Inas Mahdi, MPH is the Vice President of Training, Practice and Evaluation at the National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC) where she oversees anti-racism systems training, health system assessment and organizational change centered on the needs of Black birthing populations. Ms. Mahdi works alongside national perinatal health organizations, health systems and community-based organizations to advance systems change for equitable birth outcomes.
Ms. Mahdi has over 19 years of public health experience, working in various capacities focused on STI/HIV prevention among African American youth, intimate partner violence prevention and fatality reviews, and improving safe birth and preventing sexual violence in humanitarian conflicts. She has served as a Public Health Advisor, National Sentinel Surveillance Coordinator, and Public Health Prevention Service Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for over 13 years, supporting adolescent sexual health, sexual violence prevention, Ebola and Cholera emergency response, as well as program monitoring and evaluation. Ms. Mahdi holds a Master of Public Health degree in Epidemiology and Global Health from The University of Alabama at Birmingham where she conducted a mixed-method analysis of factors contributing to adolescent pregnancy among rural Jamaican adolescents, and a Bachelor of Science degree from The University of Alabama at Birmingham in Biology and Africana Studies.
Ms. Mahdi is currently a 3rd year doctoral student (DrPh) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health within the Health Equity and Social Justice program researching interventions that mitigate the impact of racial and sexual trauma on Black birthing people. She also serves on the research working group of the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, where she helps expand maternal health research using health equity, human rights, Black feminist-womanist theory, and social epidemiology concepts. Ms. Mahdi’s expertise and perspectives on birth equity and Black maternal health are featured in a number of perinatal health journals, Kotch’s Fourth Edition Maternal and Child Health textbook, and in the 2020 Aspen Strategy Group’s report on Reversing the U.S. Maternal Mortality Crisis.
TOPICS: Health, Disparities, Women and Girls of Color