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A community-based participatory research approach to explore community perceptions of the quality of maternal-newborn health services in the Dominican Republic.

ABSTRACT: to understand both men's and women's beliefs and attitudes regarding public maternity and newborn services, care and quality.qualitative, cross-sectional, retrospective study with an observation arm, using community-based participatory research as both the mechanism of enquiry and catalyst for change.four urban neighbourhoods in the Dominican Republic, selected in collaboration with the Provincial Medical Public Health Director and the partnering local public hospital.adolescent women (15-20 years of age), adult women (21-49 years of age) and adult men (>19 years of age) from the four neighbourhoods were recruited to participate in focus sessions, personal interviews and/or antenatal observations. A total number of 137 participants were recruited: 27 males, 51 adolescent females and 59 adult females. The attrition rate was 17% (n=23). Dominican and US midwives and nurses, as well as community leaders, comprised the research team.following informed consent, self-reported demographics and obstetric history were collected. Twelve focus groups and 12 individual interviews were recorded and transcribed, then qualitatively analysed for content and interpretation of salient themes. Antenatal observations were performed by community leaders to identify patterns of antenatal health-care delivery and utilisation. The main over-riding theme uncovered by the research was 'no me hace caso', or that women and men accessing the maternal health system did not feel valued. The significant amount of time required to receive care was interpreted by the participants as a lack of respect. Finally, the idea of 'cuña' emerged, in which participants noted special treatment for those with social connections to health-care providers. Presentation to the hospital was challenging but resulted in hospital volunteers joining the community volunteer group to collaborate on improving services.this study, conducted in the Dominican Republic, illustrates international collaboration between university researchers, maternity service providers and community members. Community-based participatory research may be an effective mechanism to unite community members and health providers in the common mission to improve maternal-newborn health services.

SUBMITTER: Foster J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2946473 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A community-based participatory research approach to explore community perceptions of the quality of maternal-newborn health services in the Dominican Republic.

Foster Jennifer J Burgos Rosa R Tejada Carmen C Cáceres Ramona R Altamonte Asela T AT Perez Lydia J LJ Noboa Frank R M FR Urbaez Marilyn F MF Heath Annemarie A Hilliard Rebecca C RC Chiang Fidela F Hall Priscilla P

Midwifery 20100808 5

<h4>Objective</h4>to understand both men's and women's beliefs and attitudes regarding public maternity and newborn services, care and quality.<h4>Design</h4>qualitative, cross-sectional, retrospective study with an observation arm, using community-based participatory research as both the mechanism of enquiry and catalyst for change.<h4>Setting</h4>four urban neighbourhoods in the Dominican Republic, selected in collaboration with the Provincial Medical Public Health Director and the partnering ...[more]

PMID: 20692744

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Project description:BackgroundNeonatal mortality accounts for 45% of under-5 mortality worldwide, with 98% of newborn deaths occurring in developing countries. The Dominican Republic (DR) demonstrates one of the highest neonatal mortality rates in Latin America despite broad access to care. Strategies to support professional capacity building and strengthen the local health care system are needed to improve neonatal outcomes in the DR.RationaleHelping babies breathe (HBB) and essential care for every baby (ECEB) are evidence-based newborn resuscitation and essential care training programs that have been shown to improve providers' confidence, knowledge, and clinical skills. Lack of professional support and infrequent resuscitation skills practice are commonly cited as barriers to skill retention after HBB training, while establishment of program mentoring and regular skills refreshers are associated with retention of clinical knowledge and skills and improved clinical performance and outcomes. Global partnerships to facilitate implementation of a comprehensive newborn resuscitation and essential care training program with ongoing clinical and program mentorship in the DR should have a lasting impact on workforce capacity, quality of care, and clinical outcomes.MethodsA multidisciplinary, international group of clinicians partnered with the Ministry of Health to design and implement a comprehensive newborn health initiative in the DR. A train-the-trainer model structured the regional rollout of a combined HBB/ECEB program with integrated quality improvement (QI) initiatives and systems for ongoing program monitoring, reinforcement, and mentorship. Cognitive, affective, behavioral, and clinical outcomes are being measured.ResultsSeventeen local champions representing six hospitals participated in the HBB/ECEB master trainer course and design of a QI tool for site-specific clinical performance monitoring. One hundred seventy-eight and 171 providers participated in HBB and ECEB courses, respectively, at pilot sites during the following year. Participants completed prior training need assessment, pre-/post-knowledge assessments and course evaluations. Program mentorship and monitoring of continuing education and clinical performance are ongoing. The Ministry of Health has assumed responsibility for program sustainability and current scale-up, including integration of maternal resuscitation training.ConclusionInternational partnerships facilitated the collaborative implementation of scalable, locally sustainable newborn resuscitation and essential care training in the DR, mobilizing local resources and empowering the workforce to capably pursue improved care of an exceedingly vulnerable community.

Project description:Every year an estimated three million neonates die globally and two hundred thousand of these deaths occur in Pakistan. Majority of these neonates die in rural areas of underdeveloped countries from preventable causes (infections, complications related to low birth weight and prematurity). Similarly about three hundred thousand mother died in 2010 and Pakistan is among ten countries where sixty percent burden of these deaths is concentrated. Maternal and neonatal mortality remain to be unacceptably high in Pakistan especially in rural areas where more than half of births occur.This community based cluster randomized controlled trial will evaluate the impact of an Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) package in the intervention arm compared to standard of care in control arm. Perinatal and neonatal mortality are primary outcome measure for this trial. The trial will be implemented in 20 clusters (Union councils) of District Rahimyar Khan, Pakistan. The EmONC package consists of provision of maternal and neonatal health pack (clean delivery kit, emollient, chlorhexidine) for safe motherhood and newborn wellbeing and training of community level and facility based health care providers with emphasis on referral of complicated cases to nearest public health facilities and community mobilization.Even though there is substantial evidence in support of effectiveness of various health interventions for improving maternal, neonatal and child health. Reduction in perinatal and neonatal mortality remains a big challenge in resource constrained and diverse countries like Pakistan and achieving MDG 4 and 5 appears to be a distant reality. A comprehensive package of community based low cost interventions along the continuum of care tailored according to the socio cultural environment coupled with existing health force capacity building may result in improving the maternal and neonatal outcomes. The findings of this proposed community based trial will provide sufficient evidence on feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness to the policy makers for replicating and scaling up the interventions within the health system.

Project description:Background:Social accountability (SA) comprises a set of mechanisms aiming to, on the one hand, enable users to raise their concerns about the health services provided to them (voice), and to hold health providers (HPs) accountable for actions and decisions related to the health service provision. On the other hand, they aim to facilitate HPs to take into account users' needs and expectations in providing care. This article describes the development of a SA intervention that aims to improve health services responsiveness in two health zones in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Methods:Beneficiaries including men, women, community health workers (CHWs), representatives of the health sector and local authorities were purposively selected and involved in an advisory process using the Dialogue Model in the two health zones: (1) Eight focus group discussions (FGDs) were organized separately during consultation aimed at sharing and discussing results from the situation analysis, and collecting suggestions for improvement, (2) Representatives of participants in previous FGDs were involved in dialogue meetings for prioritizing and integrating suggestions from FGDs, and (3) the integrated suggestions were discussed by research partners and set as intervention components. All the processes were audio-taped, transcribed and analysed using inductive content analysis. Results:Overall there were 121 participants involved in the process, 51 were female. They provided 48 suggestions. Their suggestions were integrated into six intervention components during dialogue meetings: (1) use CHWs and a health committee for collecting and transmitting community concerns about health services, (2) build the capacity of the community in terms of knowledge and information, (3) involve community leaders through dialogue meetings, (4) improve the attitude of HPs towards voice and the management of voice at health facility level, (5) involve the health service supervisors in community participation and; (6) use other existing interventions. These components were then articulated into three intervention components during programming to: create a formal voice system, introduce dialogue meetings improving enforceability and answerability, and enhance the health providers' responsiveness. Conclusions:The use of the Dialogue Model, a participatory process, allowed beneficiaries to be involved with other community stakeholders having different perspectives and types of knowledge in an advisory process and to articulate their suggestions on a combination of SA intervention components, specific for the two health zones contexts.

Project description:BackgroundMajority of causes of maternal and newborn mortalities are preventable. However, poor access to and low utilization of health services remain major barriers to optimum health of the mothers and newborns. The objectives of this study were to assess maternal and newborn health services utilization and factors affecting mothers' health service utilization.MethodsA community based cross-sectional survey was carried out on randomly selected mothers who gave birth within a year preceding the survey. The survey was supplemented with key informant interviews of experts/health professionals. Multivariable logistic model was used to identify factors associated with service utilization. Adjusted odds ratios (AORs) were used to assess the strength of the associations at p-value ≤0.05. The qualitative data were summarized thematically.ResultsA total of 789 (99.1% response rate) mothers participated in the study. The proportion of the mothers who got at least one antennal care (ANC) visit, institutional delivery and postnatal care (PNC) were 93.3, 77.4 and 92.0%, respectively. Three-forth (74.2%) of the mothers started ANC lately and only 47.5% of them completed ANC4+ visits. Medium (4-6) family size (AOR: 2.3; 95% CI: 1.1, 4.9), decision on ANC visits with husband (AOR: 30.9; 95% CI: 8.3, 115.4) or husband only (AOR: 15.3; 95%CI: 3.8, 62.3) and listening to radio (AOR: 2.5; 95%CI: 1.1, 5.6) were associated with ANC attendance. Mothers whose husbands read/write (AOR: 1.6; 95% CI: 1.1, 2.), attended formal education (AOR: 2.8; 95% CI: 1.1, 6.8), have positive attitudes (AOR: 10.2; 95% CI: 25.9), living in small (AOR: 3.0; 95% CI: 1.2, 7.6) and medium size family (AOR: 2.3; 95% CI: 1.2, 4.1) were more likely to give birth in-health facilities. The proportion of PNC checkups among mothers who delivered in health facilities and at home were 92.0 and 32.5%, respectively. The key informants mentioned that home delivery, delayed arrival of the mothers, unsafe delivery settings, shortage of skilled personnel and supplies were major obstacles to maternal health services utilization.ConclusionsHealth information communication targeting husbands may improve maternal and newborn health services utilization. In service training of personnel and equipping health facilities with essential supplies can improve the provider side barriers.

Project description:Introduction: In 2017, approximately 295,000 women died during and immediately following pregnancy and childbirth worldwide, with 94% of these deaths occurring in low-resource settings. The Dominican Republic (DR) exhibits one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean despite the fact that 99% of registered births in the country are reportedly attended by a skilled birth attendant. This paradox implies that programs to support healthcare worker knowledge and skills improvement are vital to improving maternal health outcomes in the DR. Helping Mothers Survive (HMS) is a provider training program developed by Jhpiego and global partners. The goal of HMS is to combat maternal mortality by contributing to quality improvement efforts that reinforce maternal health skills of local healthcare workers. Methods: An international, multisectoral group of stakeholders collaborated in the implementation of two HMS curricula, Bleeding After Birth (BAB) and pre-eclampsia & eclampsia (PE&E). Demographic information as well as pre- and post-training knowledge scores were recorded for each participant. Knowledge score improvement was assessed in order to support effectiveness of the program on knowledge acquisition of healthcare workers. Results: Three hundred and twenty healthcare workers participated in the HMS training workshops between October 2016-August 2020. Of the 320 participants, 132 were trained as master trainers. The majority of participants identified as attending physicians, followed by residents/interns, nurses, students, and "other." A significant improvement in knowledge scores was observed for both the BAB and PE&E curricula, with a 21.24 and 30.25% change in average score (pre- to post-test), respectively. In response to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, flexibility of the local team led to a PE&E virtual training pilot workshop in August 2020. Discussion/Conclusions: Simulation-based training improved the knowledge levels of healthcare workers for both HMS curricula. These results suggest that simulation-based workshops have an impact on knowledge acquisition and skills of healthcare workers immediately following training. For the PE&E curriculum, no significant difference in knowledge acquisition was observed between in-person and virtual training sessions. The ongoing pandemic poses challenges to program implementation; however, these preliminary results provide evidence that conducting virtual workshops may be a viable alternative to in-person training.

Project description:In early 2016, we implemented a community-based maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) surveillance using mobile phones to collect, analyze, and use data by village health volunteers (VHV) in Kenge Health Zone (KHZ), in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The objective of this study was to determine the perceptions of households, attitudes of community health volunteers, and opinions of nurses in Health center and administrative authorities towards the use of mobile phones for MNCH surveillance in the rural KHZ in the DRC.We used mixed methods combining phenomenological and descriptive cross-sectional study. Between 3 and 24 March 2016, we collected the data through focus group discussions (FGD) with households, and structured interviews with VHV, local health and administrative authority, and nurses to explore the perceptions on MNCH surveillance using mobile phone. Data from the FGD and interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis techniques and descriptive statistics respectively.Health issues and services for under-five children were well known by community; however, beliefs and cultural norms contributed to the practices of seeking behavior for households. Mobile phones were perceived as devices that render quick services for people who needed help; and the community's attitudes towards the mobile phone use for collection of data, analysis, and use activities were good. Although some of community members did not see a direct linkage between this surveillance approach and health benefits, majority believed that there would be better MNCH services with the use of mobile phone. In addition, VHV will benefit from free healthcare for households and some material benefits and training. The best time to undertake these activities were in the afternoon with mother of the child, being the best respondent at the household.Health issues and services for under-five children are well known and MNCH surveillance using mobile phone by VHV in which the mother can be involved as respondent is accepted.

Dataset Information

A community-based participatory research approach to explore community perceptions of the quality of maternal-newborn health services in the Dominican Republic.

Publications

A community-based participatory research approach to explore community perceptions of the quality of maternal-newborn health services in the Dominican Republic.

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