Professor Jelle Stekelenburg
Biography
Prof. Jelle Stekelenburg combines his job as Consultant Obs & Gyn at the Medical Centre Leeuwarden with holding a chair as Professor International Aspects of Reproductive Health, in particular Safe Motherhood, at the University of Groningen.
His professional drive is based on, on one hand, the observation that motherhood is still not safe for many underprivileged women all over the world, but mainly in low resource settings, and, on the other hand, acknowledgment of the right to access the best possible standard of maternal health. State parties, governments, multilateral health organisations and individual health professionals have the immediate obligation to work on the progressive realisation of the highest possible standard of reproductive, sexual and maternal health.
Prof. Stekelenburg’s activities focus on research and education. He collaborates with PhD-candidates from all over the world, aiming to design evidence-based interventions in different contexts that are effective in improving maternal and neonatal health outcome indicators. He and many of his students have worked on severe maternal morbidity and maternal mortality research in different countries (the Netherlands, Namibia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ruanda, Malawi). In education he takes every opportunity to teach his students about what still needs to be done to reach the aim of safe motherhood for all.
In the Netherlands, Prof. Stekelenburg is a member of the Audit Committee Maternal Morbidity and Mortality and, through the Netherlands Obstetric Surveillance System (NethOSS), contributed to the work of the International Obstetric Surveillance System (INOSS) and is a co-founder of the Ethiopian Obstetric Surveillance System (EthOSS).
Since 2021, he is the Principal Investigator of PRESCRIP-TEC. The Prevention and Screening Innovation Project Toward Elimination of Cervical Cancer (PRESCRIP-TEC) is a three-year project (February 2021 – January 2024) that focuses its research on increasing the adoption of cervical cancer screening in resource-poor or hard-to-reach settings of Bangladesh, India, Uganda and Slovakia. PRESCRIP-TEC leads to effective and innovative cervical cancer screening, including direct treatment and follow-up for women in these four countries, improving availability, accessibility, acceptability and, quality of health care services.