Healing in Action

Elizabeth O’Donnell, M.Ed, MPH, is a maternal health systems strategist and the founder of Aaliyah in Action, a national nonprofit supporting families after pregnancy and infant loss. She is also the Co-Founder and Director of Education at PUSH for Empowered Pregnancy, where she leads the efforts in stillbirth prevention education and provider-facing training. Her work is deeply informed by experiences after the stillbirth of her daughter, Aaliyah, that exposed critical gaps in care and continues to shape her focus on systems-level change. 

Following her loss, Elizabeth became actively engaged in advocacy around paid family leave and workplace protections, using her voice to push for more equitable support for families after stillbirth. Her advocacy contributed to efforts that advanced the District of Columbia’s emergency bereavement legislation and expanded paid family leave to explicitly include stillbirth, further positioning her at the intersection of policy, maternal health, and systems reform.

Rather than operating solely at the level of awareness, Elizabeth builds and advances frameworks designed to improve how healthcare systems respond to loss and support families in the postpartum time post loss.

Her work sits at the intersection of lived experience, public health, and systems reform, with a focus on stillbirth prevention, perinatal bereavement care, and postpartum mental health after loss. Through her leadership, she has partnered with hospitals, organizations, and communities across the United States to advance more responsive and equitable models of care. In recognition of this work Elizabeth was named a Washingtonian Magazine Washingtonian of the Year in 2024 and received a Serve DC's Spirit of Service Award  for Community Impact in 2023.

With formal training in both education and public health, Elizabeth brings a unique ability to translate complex systems challenges into clear, actionable strategies. Her work is grounded in both professional expertise and personal experience, allowing her to speak with clarity, credibility, and impact across clinical, academic, and organizational settings. She is also a member of Delta Omega, the national public health honor society.