Maternal & Child Health

This analysis shows that a program to introduce emergency obstetric care and a referral system rapidly and significantly reduced the level of maternal mortality in two project areas in Burundi and Sierra Leone. [adapated from author]

This study sought to determine appropriateness of treatment of common childhood illnesses at private sector drug shops in two rural districts of Uganda. [adapted from abstract]

The simulated client (SC) method for evaluating health worker performance utilizes surveyors who pose as patients to make surreptitious observations during consultations. During a trial that evaluated a quality improvement intervention in Benin, the authors conducted an SC survey with adult caretakers as surveyors and real children to evaluate the feasibility of this approach for evaluating health worker performance for pediatric illnesses. [adapted from abstract]

Ethiopia has been deploying specially trained cadres of community based health workers named health extension workers. This study investigates the role of these these community health workers in improving utilization of maternal health services. [adapted from abstract]

The objective of this systematic review was to assess the effectiveness of strategies incorporating training and support of traditional birth attendants on the outcomes of perinatal, neonatal, and maternal death in developing countries. [from abstract]

In a district hospital in conflict-torn Somalia, the authors assessed the impact of introducing telemedicine on the quality of paediatric care, and the added value as perceived by local clinicians. [from abstract]

This article describes an exploratory study that asked: what is understood by the term motivation; what encourages and discourages providers of maternal and newborn care in rural areas; and which factors influence their performance and job satisfaction. [adapted from author]

Shifting the role of counseling to less skilled workers may improve efficiency and coverage of health services, but evidence is needed on the impact of substitution on quality of care. This research explored the influence of delegating maternal and newborn counseling responsibilities to clinic-based lay nurse aides on the quality of counseling provided as part of a task shifting initiative to expand their role. [from abstract]

This article describes the process and results of an uncontrolled before and after study to explore intervention dose-effect relationships, as clinical practice guidelines were disseminated and training was progressively implemented. [adapted from author]

The brief describes the difference a community health worker program has made to the lives of children in one remote region of Ghana.

This training program is designed for community health workers working in maternal and child health and covers topics such as family planning, reproductive health, gender violence, prevention of mother-to-child HIV among others.

This impact evaluation was conducted to assess volunteer community health workers’ effect on child morbidity, mortality and to calculate volunteer retention. [from abstract]

This study examined the quality of facility-based maternal and newborn health care by describing the implementation of recommended practices for maternal and newborn care among health care facilities to determine whether increased training, supervision, and incentives for health workers were associated with implementing these recommended practices. [adapted from author]

This study evaluated a nintervention to support health workers after training in integrated management of childhood illness, a strategy that can improve outcomes for children in developing countries by encouraging workers’ use of evidence-based guidelines for managing the leading causes of child mortality. [from author]

This report describes pioneering work where quality improvement methods are being applied to strengthen human resources management and performance at the facility, district, and regional management levels to improve maternal care in Niger’s Tahoua Region. [from summary]

This study compares and contrasts two provider types - obstetric nurses and professional midwives - with the medical model, analyzing perspectives on their respective training, scope of practice, and also their perception and experiences with integration into the public system as skilled birth attendants. [from abstract]

This policy brief explores actual performance of emergency obstetric care (EmOC) and other related maternal and newborn health services by Nurses, nurse-midwives, and non-physician clinicians who provided at least one of the EmOC signal functions in the previous three months preceding data collection in hospitals and health centres throughout Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania. [adapted from author]

This study explored clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for maternal health in Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Tanzania to compare factors related to CPG use including their content compared with World Health Organization guidelines, their format, and their development processes; and to explore perceptions of their availability and use in practice. The overall purpose was to further the understanding of how to increase CPGs’ potential to improve quality of care for mothers. [adapted from abstract]

This policy brief addresses the role of partnerships between health workers and the community, for the purposes of improving maternal, newborn and child health in resource-constrained settings, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region. [from author]

This policy brief summarises the critical workforce issues
highlighted from a review of the literature of maternal,
newborn and child health services at community
level, with a particular focus on the Asia Pacific region. [from author]

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in Papua New Guinea: their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice. [from author]

As part of a community-based package of maternal-neonatal health care, community health workers (CHWs) were trained to conduct household surveillance and to identify and refer sick newborns according to a clinical algorithm. Assessments of newborns by CHWs at home were linked to hospital-based assessments by physicians, and factors impacting referral, referral compliance and outcome were evaluated. [from author]

This article evaluates a pilot project to examine the feasibility of an innovative three-tiered network of community-based providers for delivery of maternal health interventions in the complex emergency setting of eastern Burma. [adapted from author]

This document analalyzes the effectiveness of performance incentive schemes in developing countries that comprise maternal health components, including family planning. [adapted from author]

This document highlights four community-based health delivery strategies that have demonstrated improvements in child health in high-mortality, low-resource settings and supports the growing recognition that community programs that reach beyond the walls of health care facilities and involve community members as partners have a great potential for further reducing child mortality at low cost. [adapated from author]

This learning resource package contains the trainer manual with all the material to design and hold a traning course for community health workers on postpartum family planing methods and counselling skills. It also has a participant manual for use during the training.

​This interactive map highlights the disproportionate distribution of child mortality throughout the world. It allows users to explore the map to see a real life situation in each country to see some of the difficult decisions health workers have to make in its “5 impossible decisions” feature. [adapted from publisher]

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in Timor-Leste: their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice. [from summary]

This paper uses ethnographic methods to document health workers’ antenatal care practices with reference to the national Focused Antenatal Care guidelines and identifies factors influencing health workers’ performance. Potential implications for improving antenatal care provision in Tanzania are discussed. [from abstract]

This profile summarises the available information on the cadres working at community level in Cambodia; their diversity, distribution, supervisory structures, education and training, as well as the policy and regulations that govern their practice. [from summary]