Published: 07/16/2026
By Catherine Wu, Global Health Communications Assistant
In a new feature by Stanford Impact Labs, Global Health Core Leader Dr. Gary Darmstadt shares insights about family-centered approaches to newborn survival in rural Uttar Pradesh, India. The story highlights two Stanford-led research teams, including Darmstadt’s, which are advancing family-centered approaches to care in the United States and India.
Darmstadt, an associate dean for maternal and child health and Sue Alvarez Professor of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine in the Stanford Department of Pediatrics, developed his project with the Community Empowerment Lab, supported by Stanford Impact Labs. His project focuses on designing and scaling community-initiated kangaroo mother care (KMC), which, paired with essential newborn care, has the potential to cut mortality in the region by more than half.
KMC prioritizes continuous skin-to-skin contact between parents or caregivers and the infant as well as exclusive breastmilk feeding. In rural settings, practicing KMC often requires surmounting barriers such as cultural expectations that pull mothers away from their newborns to attend to household duties. Darmstadt seeks to develop sustainable ways of delivering KMC, leveraging broader support and involvement across families, communities, and the health system.
This latest recognition builds on Darmstadt’s long-standing leadership in the field. In 2023, he shared insights from co-chairing the WHO working group behind new global recommendations for preterm and low-birth-weight infants. In 2025 that work culminated in a new WHO clinical practice guide to help health workers and families practice KMC everywhere, from health facilities to at home.
These projects address a central challenge: that separation of mothers and infants has become routine and is “one of the most damaging things our health system has created,” as Darmstadt told Stanford Impact Labs. Building family connection back into newborn care, his research shows, can be a life-saving intervention.