Sexual|Reproductive Health

Community Support System (CmSS) Evaluation Report

Reduction of maternal and infant morbidity and mortality is a priority area in the Health Nutrition and Population Section Program (HNSP) of the Government of Bangladesh. To address huge unmet needs for maternal and neonatal health (MNH) services, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) with support from JICA launched the Safe Motherhood Promotion Project (SMPP) in Narsingdi district in 2006. The purposed of the SMPP project is to improve health status of pregnant and postpartum women and neonates in the project area. [78 pages] Read More...

An impact evaluation of the Safe Motherhood Promotion Project in Bangladesh: Evidence from Japanese aid-funded technical cooperation

This paper reports the findings from a quasi-experimental impact evaluation of the Safe Motherhood Promotion Project (SMPP) conducted in the Narsingdi district of Bangladesh. SMPP is a Japanese aid- funded technical cooperation project aimed at developing local capacities to tackle maternal and new- born health problems in rural areas. We assessed whether the project interventions, in particular, community-based activities under the Model Union approach, had a favorable impact on women’s access to and knowledge of maternal health care during pregnancy and childbirth. The project comprises a package of interlinked interventions to facilitate safe motherhood practices at primary and secondary care levels. [8 pages] Read More...

The Effect of Addressing Demand for as well as Supply of Emergency Obstetric Care in Dinajpur, Bangladesh

The Dinajpur SafeMother initiative (DSI) was designed to test the impact of several interventions on use of obstetric services in government health facilities in Northwester Bangladesh during 1998-2001. Intervention: Facility-based interventions included upgrading health facilities. The sub-district hospitals or Upazila Health Centers (UHCs) had earlier been upgraded to provide basic emergency obstetric care. The project undertook activities designed to improve the quality of care in the facilities which included team-building among providers, case reviews, and a stakeholders' committee. [10 pages] Read More...

Situación de las Prácticas de Alimentación y Nutrición Materna Infantil Estudio de Línea de Base

El Instituto de Investigación Nutricional realizó la línea de base en el ámbito del proyecto “Ventana de Oportunidad” de CARE Perú en las Regiones de Ayacucho y Apurímac en grupos de intervención del proyecto y grupos de control. Las encuestas fueron realizadas entre septiembre y noviembre de 2010 y fueron aplicadas a una muestra de madres de niños/as entre 0 y 2 años de edad seleccionados al azar en los distritos seleccionados para el proyecto. [153 pages] Read More...

Highlands Sexual, Reproductive and Maternal Health Project

For CARE staff involved in the Highlands Sexual, Reproductive and Maternal Health (HSRMH) project – a project conducted in small communities in the very remote highlands of Papua New Guinea where health indicators are some of the worst in the world – this story demonstrates the significant changes possible from the Community Workshop Series and the project at large. [37 pages] Read More...

Evaluation of the Team-Based Goals and Performance Based Incentives (TBGI) Intervention in Bihar

The Team-Based Goals and Performance-Based Incentives (TBGI) intervention, which CARE conceptualized, developed, and implemented as part of the Ananya program in Bihar, leverages the power of incentives and lessons from motivational theory on teamwork and goal-setting to help improve maternal and child health. Under the intervention, CARE set targets for the percentage of eligible beneficiaries in a subcenter catchment area who should have adopted each of seven key health behaviors or goals (Box 1). All frontline health workers (FLWs) in a given subcenter, including the accredited social health activists (ASHAs), Anganwadi workers (AWWs), and the subcenters’ auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs), received nonmonetary incentives (consisting of small household items) if their subcenters met five of seven goals in a given quarter. The intervention explicitly sought to encourage teamwork and cooperation among FLWs by providing these incentives for achievements by the subcenter as a whole rather than by individual FLWs, and by providing FLWs with information on the concept and importance of teamwork. It included additional elements to motivate the FLWs in each subcenter, such as a service pledge they recited together and a certificate of recognition for subcenters that met their targets in all quarters. Overall, the intervention was expected to lead to improvements in the incentivized outcomes and to broader changes in related, but nonincentivized, outcomes through increased FLW motivation and teamwork. [82 pages]
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Integrated Family Health Initiative: Catalysing change for healthy communities

Recent trends in the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), nutritional status, immunization and family planning, as highlighted in Figure 1, 2, 3 and 4, indicate that there are substantial gaps in achieving related MDG goals 4 and 5.

Despite recent gains and commitments from the Government of Bihar (GoB) and active leadership of key stakeholders to improve health infrastructure and outcomes, deep-rooted problems limit the government’s ability to affect lasting change. Persistent barriers include poor quality and availability of frontline and primary health center level services and staff, limited access to services by neglected and marginalized populations, lack of accurate data, lack of effective program management, weak training systems, absence of supervision in health facilities, poor functional integration of interventions, inadequate public health infrastructures, and an underdeveloped and unregulated private sector.

With support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Integrated Family Health Initiative (IFHI) program seeks to support the GoB to improve family health outcomes statewide as well as build their leadership and ownership towards these services. Ultimately this is to accelerate the progress toward MDG 4 to reduce child mortality and MDG 5 to improve maternal health. [12 pages] Read More...

Evaluation of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Continuum of Care Services (CCS) Intervention in Bihar

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Continuum of Care Services (CCS) intervention was conceptualized and implemented by CARE as part of the Ananya program in Bihar.1 The intervention involves the provision of ICT-enabled mobile-phone-based tools for frontline workers (FLWs) that aim to increase the coverage and quality of services that FLWs provide, enhance their communication with beneficiaries, and facilitate supervision (Box 1 summarizes the features of the ICT-CCS tool). [123 pages] Read More...

Measurement, Learning, and Evaluation Framework for the Bihar Initiative

The Family Health Initiative in Bihar, India (referred to in this report as the “Bihar Initiative”) is one of the foundation’s flagship programs. It represents a new approach to investing in global health, with the goal of yielding greater impacts on health outcomes and mortality, and accelerating progress toward Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. In particular, the Bihar Initiative takes an integrated approach to improving reproductive, maternal, neonatal, and child health by leveraging and bundling services and delivery mechanisms from several of the foundation’s Global Health Strategies to improve uptake and coverage across the continuum of family health care. These strategies include Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Health; Family Planning; Nutrition; Vaccine Delivery; Tuberculosis; Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases; Pneumonia; and Neglected and Other Infectious Diseases. [60 pages] Read More...

Measurement, Learning, and Evaluation for the Ananya Program (Family Health Initiative in Bihar)

In 2010, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Family Health Initiative in Bihar, India (now named “Ananya”, a Sanskrit word meaning “unique” or “unlike others”). The goals of the Ananya program (2010–2015) are to reduce maternal, newborn, and child mortality; malnutrition; fertility; and morbidity from infectious diseases by developing and implementing innovative and integrated health solutions that involve both the public and private sectors. More specifically, the program aims to expand the reach, coverage, and quality of (1) essential primary health and nutrition services for infants, children, and women of reproductive age; and (2) diagnostic and disease-control services for infectious diseases, including pneumonia, diarrhea, tuberculosis, and visceral leishmaniasis. [68 pages] Read More...

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