What: Dilys Walker: Bringing highly realistic low-tech simulation training for obstetric emergencies to low-resource settings When: Tuesday, May 7th at 12 noon Where: The Allen Center, CSE 203 *Bringing highly realistic low-tech simulation training for obstetric emergencies to low-resource settings* Maternal and infant mortality during childbirth is a major problem in low-resource countries, where 99% of the nearly 350,000 annual maternal deaths occur. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 have committed governments and organizations worldwide to invest in efforts to end these preventable deaths. Evidence suggests that one of the most effective strategies to achieve this is by ensuring that every birth is attended by a trained professional capable of identifying rare, but life-threatening obstetric and neonatal emergencies. However large gaps exist between knowledge and actual practice in the face of an obstetric or neonatal emergency, and effective but high-cost simulation training to bridge this gap is inaccessible. Our team has designed and developed three effective tools to reduce maternal and infant mortality in low-resource countries: PRONTO, an obstetric and neonatal emergency simulation training program for medical teams, PartoPants, a low-tech, highly realistic birth simulator, and the PRONTOPack, a complete, low cost simulation kit. PRONTOPack will enable low-resource hospitals, clinics and training programs worldwide to deliver comprehensive simulation training at a fraction of the cost of traditional simulation training. *Dilys Walker* is an Associate Professor in Obstetrics & Gynecology and Global Health and an invited Professor at the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico where she worked from 1998 to 2010 in the Department of Reproductive Health. Dr. Walker is Associate Director for the UW Global Center for Integrated Health of Women, Adolescents, and Children (Global WACh). She received her medical degree from the University of California San Diego and completed residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Walker was the first Family Planning Fellow at the University of California San Francisco. She is co-founder and Executive Director of PRONTO International (www.prontointernational.org), an emergency obstetric and neonatal training program that is grounded in low-tech highly realistic simulation. She is currently conducting PRONTO implementation trials in Mexico, Guatemala, and Kenya. Her research has focused on prevention of unplanned adolescent pregnancy, task sharing in obstetrics, abortion, family planning and maternal mortality.