Choosing a Path to Make Women’s Lives Better

By Ann Harrington.

At 19, Katy Backes had a conversation that set her on a path for her life’s work. At a kitchen table in central Minnesota with her maternal grandmother, “Grandma Rita,” she learned that her grandmother had nearly died giving birth to Katy’s Uncle Tom, and then, in 1955, how Rita’s sister Beatrice, known as “Beattie,” had died after giving birth in Oklahoma, leaving behind five children who were adopted out of the family.

Those very personal stories inspired Katy, now Dr. Katy Backes Kozhimannil, to pursue a career in health policy, with a focus on maternal and rural health. “I set out to find ways to make women’s lives better,” Katy says, “To make the lives of women and girls more joyful, more expansive, more safe.” Her path to her current role, as a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota, and co-director of the University’s Rural Health Center and its Rural Health Program, sent her all over the world, working on some of the most urgent health issues for women and families.

Giving Back to Improve Health Outcomes

Katy had never thought of herself as someone who had the capacity to support the causes that were important to her in a substantial way. But in 2020, her circumstances changed, and she realized she could. Katy reached out to the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota (WFM), which had awarded her a scholarship as an undergraduate, when she really needed it. She chose WFM “because they deeply care about women and girls in Minnesota. That’s who I am and where I come from, and what made me.” It’s also important to her that the WFM is dedicated to the entire state, not just the Twin Cities area.

She set up a donor advised fund with WFM. She has used some of the money to make grants, including many to Indigenous-led organizations and causes in Minnesota, and invested in the Reproductive Freedom Fund. “That was one of the initiatives that felt incredibly urgent and timely to me in 2022,” Katy said. “It’s absolutely essential that people have access to the care they need when they are pregnant—when they want to be, and when they don’t—and access to a full spectrum of services and respectful care, especially in rural communities.”

As a Peace Corps volunteer in Mozambique, Katy saw how prioritizing girls’ education, women’s well-being, and community public health infrastructure could improve maternal health in a country with high poverty and other challenges. Back in the US, a stint teaching English to refugees and immigrants at home in Minnesota left her frustrated at the structural challenges affecting her students’ lives. Some of the challenges young women faced were similar in Mozambique and Minnesota. In her graduate education and career, she grew to understand the policy decisions that shaped the choices people had—and started to change some of them. By 2010, she was helping build that evidence base for maternal health as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

There was much to do. Although maternal mortality rates have declined significantly since Grandma Rita’s day, maternal mortality in the United States has risen in recent decades, especially in rural areas. The U.S. has the highest rate of maternal deaths among wealthy nations, with Native American and Black women dying at several times the rate of white women. As someone whose ancestry includes Native lineage (her great-grandparents on her father’s side came from the White Earth Ojibwe Nation and were adopted out of Indian boarding schools by German Catholic families), Katy is committed to addressing these disparities.

Much of her recent research has focused on the declines in access to obstetric care in rural hospitals across the United States. Having spent much of her childhood in Greater Minnesota, Katy has a deep love of the land and feels a sense of solidarity with folks who live in rural areas. “When people do pay attention to rural [issues], it’s to feel sorry for us and our communities,” she says. “I am passionate about both those voices being heard and there being a narrative of not just the resilience, but the beauty of rural lands and the vibrancy of people and families in rural communities.”

A Conduit for Justice

Katy sees her giving and her policy work in the context of a Seven Generations framework, an Indigenous perspective that asks: What decisions that were made seven generations ago allow us to be here today? And how are the decisions we are making now—about our climate, our reproductive health, our democracy—going to shape the lives of those who are here seven generations from now? How can we be a good (future) ancestor at this time?

Katy said, “When I came into a time in life of having more privilege and resources, I recognized it as an opportunity to use these in a way that is aligned with my values. It felt like an infusion of resources that amplified how I was able to influence the world,” said, adding, “And that feels like a great honor, and also, it feels spiritual in a way, of being able to be a conduit for kindness, for justice.”

Get Involved

To learn more about DAFs or supporting charitable organizations across Minnesota that center women and girls+ through a donor advised fund, please contact Polina Montes de Oca at 612-236-1834 or polina@wfmn.org.

Ann Harrington is a writer and editor in St. Paul.