Maternal & Child Health

Determinants of Skilled Birth Attendants for Delivery in Nepal

This review is to explore the factors affecting the uptake of skilled birth attendants for delivery and the issues associated with women’s role and choices of maternal health care service for delivery in Nepal. [from abstract]

Child Health Nurses in the Solomon Islands: Lessons for the Pacific and Other Developing Countries

The objectives of this study were to understand the roles of nurses with advanced training in paediatrics in the Solomon Islands and the importance of these roles to child health; to understand how adequately equipped child health nurses feel for these roles; and to identify the training needs, difficulties and future opportunities. [adapted from abstract]

Knowledge and Performance of the Ethiopian Health Extension Workers on Antenatal and Delivery Care: A Cross-Sectional Study

This study investigated the knowledge and performance of health extension workers (HEWs) on antenatal and delivery care. The study also explored the barriers and facilitators for HEWs in the provision of maternal health care. [from abstract]

Safe Delivery: Reducing Maternal Mortality in Sierra Leone and Burundi

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]

Public Health Interventions in Midwifery: A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews

Maternity care providers, particularly midwives, have a window of opportunity to influence pregnant women about positive health choices. This aim of this paper is to identify evidence of effective public health interventions from good quality systematic reviews that could be conducted by midwives. [from abstract]

Private Sector Drug Shops in Integrated Community Case Management of Malaria, Pneumonia, and Diarrhea in Children in Uganda

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]

Evaluating Health Worker Performance in Benin Using the Simulated Client Method with Real Children

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]

Role of Health Extension Workers in Improving Utilization of Maternal Health Services in Rural Areas in Ethiopia: A Cross-Sectional Study

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]

Effectiveness of Strategies Incorporating Training and Support of Traditional Birth Attendants on Perinatal and Maternal Mortality: Meta-Analysis

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]

Practicing Medicine without Borders: Tele-Consultation and Tele-Mentoring for Improving Paediatric Care in a Conflict Setting in Somalia

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]

Are Community Midwives Addressing the Inequities in Access to Skilled Birth Attendance in Punjab, Pakistan? Gender, Class and Social Exclusion

To address its high maternal mortality rate, in particular the inequities in access to maternal health care services, the government of Pakistan created a new cadre of community-based midwives. This study is designed to address a critical gap in our knowledge about whether this cadre of workers, operating in the private health care context, will meet the expectation to provide care to the poorest and most marginalized women. [adapted from author]

Maternal and Newborn Healthcare Providers in Rural Tanzania: In-Depth Interviews on Motivation, Performance and Job Satisfaction

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]

Task Shifting in Maternal and Newborn Care: A Non-Inferiority Study Examining Delegation of Antenatal Counseling to Lay Nurse Aides Supported by Job Aids in Benin

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]

Performance of Health Workers in the Management of Seriously Sick Children at a Kenyan Tertiary Hospital: Before and after a Training Intervention

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]

Midwifery Workforce Management and Innovation

Prepared as a background document for “The State of the World’s Midwifery 2011,” this paper focuses on three overarching aspects essential to midwifery workforce management: managing entry to the workforce, managing stay in the workforce, and managing exit from the workforce. [adapted from author]

Community Health Workers Provide Crucial Health Services in Ghana's Remote Communities

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

Maternal Mortality Reduction Program Assistant Training

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.

Can Volunteer Community Health Workers Decrease Child Morbitiy and Mortality in Southwestern Uganda? An Impact Evaluation

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

Identifying Characteristics Associated with Performing Recommended Practices in Maternal and Newborn Care among Health Facilities in Rwanda: A Cross-Sectional Study

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]

Multifaceted Intervention to Improve Health Worker Adherence to Integrated Management of Childhood Illness Guidelines in Benin

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]

Pilot Model: 18 Month Training of Ethnic Minority Midwives

Areas of the Vietnam still experience severe shortages of health workers for reproductive health, particularly mountainous and other remote areas populated by ethnic minorities. This case study evaluates a program to lower maternal mortality rates and encourage healthier births in these areas through an 18 month training for ethic minority midwives. [adapted from author]

Aligning and Clarifying Health Worker Tasks to Improve Maternal Care in Niger: the Tahoua Region Human Resources Quality Improvement Collaborative

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]

Midwives Service Scheme in Nigeria

This study evaluates the Midwives Service Scheme in Nigeria which engaged newly graduated, unemployed, and retired midwives to work temporarily in rural areas to improve the wide variation between maternal, newborn, and child health indices across geopolitical zones and between urban and rural areas, mostly due to variations in the availability of skilled attendance at birth. [adapted from author]

Non-Physician Providers of Obstetric Care in Mexico: Perspectives of Physicians, Obstetric Nurses and Professional Midwives

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]

Who is Doing What? Performance of the Emergency Obstetric Signal Functions by Non-Physician Clinicians and Nurse-Midwives in Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania

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]

How to Know What You Need to Do: A Cross-Country Comparison of Maternal Health Guidelines in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Tanzania

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]

Text Messages as a Learning Tool for Midwives

This study aimed to assess whether the use of cell phone text messaging to improve access to continuing healthcare education in under-resourced settings is acceptable to South African midwives in both the public and private sectors. [adapted from author]

Improving Partnerships between Health Workers and the Community for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health

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]

Human Resource for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health at the Community Level: What Do We Know?

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]

Evaluation of Primary Care Midwifery in the Netherlands: Design and Rationale of a Dynamic Cohort Study (DELIVER)

This paper describes the research design and methodology of the multicenter, multidisciplinary study evaluating the quality and provision of primary midwifery care. [adapted from abstract]