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Methodological development of tools to measure how women are treated during facility-based childbirth in four countries: labor observation and community survey.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Efforts to improve maternal health are increasingly focused on improving the quality of care provided to women at health facilities, including the promotion of respectful care and eliminating mistreatment of women during childbirth. A WHO-led multi-country research project aims to develop and validate two tools (labor observation and community survey) to measure how women are treated during facility-based childbirth. This paper describes the development process for these measurement tools, and how they were implemented in a multi-country study (Ghana, Guinea, Myanmar and Nigeria). METHODS:An iterative mixed-methods approach was used to develop two measurement tools. Methodological development was conducted in four steps: (1) initial tool development; (2) validity testing, item adjustment and piloting of paper-based tools; (3) conversion to digital, tablet-based tools; and (4) data collection and analysis. These steps included systematic reviews, primary qualitative research, mapping of existing tools, item consolidation, peer review by key stakeholders and piloting. RESULTS:The development, structure, administration format, and implementation of the labor observation and community survey tools are described. For the labor observations, a total of 2016 women participated: 408 in Nigeria, 682 in Guinea, and 926 in Ghana. For the community survey, a total of 2672 women participated: 561 in Nigeria, 644 in Guinea, 836 in Ghana, and 631 in Myanmar. Of the 2016 women who participated in the labor observations, 1536 women (76.2%) also participated in the community survey and have linked data: 779 in Ghana, 425 in Guinea, and 332 in Nigeria. CONCLUSIONS:An important step to improve the quality of maternity care is to understand the magnitude and burden of mistreatment across contexts. Researchers and healthcare providers in maternal health are encouraged to use and implement these tools, to inform the development of more women-centered, respectful maternity healthcare services. By measuring the prevalence of mistreatment of women during childbirth, we will be able to design and implement programs and policies to transform maternity services.

SUBMITTER: Bohren MA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6238369 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Methodological development of tools to measure how women are treated during facility-based childbirth in four countries: labor observation and community survey.

Bohren Meghan A MA Vogel Joshua P JP Fawole Bukola B Maya Ernest T ET Maung Thae Maung TM Baldé Mamadou Diouldé MD Oyeniran Agnes A AA Ogunlade Modupe M Adu-Bonsaffoh Kwame K Mon Nwe Oo NO Diallo Boubacar Alpha BA Bangoura Abou A Adanu Richard R Landoulsi Sihem S Gülmezoglu A Metin AM Tunçalp Özge Ö

BMC medical research methodology 20181115 1

<h4>Background</h4>Efforts to improve maternal health are increasingly focused on improving the quality of care provided to women at health facilities, including the promotion of respectful care and eliminating mistreatment of women during childbirth. A WHO-led multi-country research project aims to develop and validate two tools (labor observation and community survey) to measure how women are treated during facility-based childbirth. This paper describes the development process for these measu ...[more]

PMID: 30442102

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Project description:BackgroundWomen across the world are mistreated during childbirth. We aimed to develop and implement evidence-informed, validated tools to measure mistreatment during childbirth, and report results from a cross-sectional study in four low-income and middle-income countries.MethodsWe prospectively recruited women aged at least 15 years in twelve health facilities (three per country) in Ghana, Guinea, Myanmar, and Nigeria between Sept 19, 2016, and Jan 18, 2018. Continuous observations of labour and childbirth were done from admission up to 2 h post partum. Surveys were administered by interviewers in the community to women up to 8 weeks post partum. Labour observations were not done in Myanmar. Data were collected on sociodemographics, obstetric history, and experiences of mistreatment.Findings2016 labour observations and 2672 surveys were done. 838 (41·6%) of 2016 observed women and 945 (35·4%) of 2672 surveyed women experienced physical or verbal abuse, or stigma or discrimination. Physical and verbal abuse peaked 30 min before birth until 15 min after birth (observation). Many women did not consent for episiotomy (observation: 190 [75·1%] of 253; survey: 295 [56·1%] of 526) or caesarean section (observation: 35 [13·4%] of 261; survey: 52 [10·8%] of 483), despite receiving these procedures. 133 (5·0%) of 2672 women or their babies were detained in the facility because they were unable to pay the bill (survey). Younger age (15-19 years) and lack of education were the primary determinants of mistreatment (survey). For example, younger women with no education (odds ratio [OR] 3·6, 95% CI 1·6-8·0) and younger women with some education (OR 1·6, 1·1-2·3) were more likely to experience verbal abuse, compared with older women (?30 years), adjusting for marital status and parity.InterpretationMore than a third of women experienced mistreatment and were particularly vulnerable around the time of birth. Women who were younger and less educated were most at risk, suggesting inequalities in how women are treated during childbirth. Understanding drivers and structural dimensions of mistreatment, including gender and social inequalities, is essential to ensure that interventions adequately account for the broader context.FundingUnited States Agency for International Development and the UNDP/UNFPA/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, WHO.

Project description:BackgroundHigh quality care is crucial in ensuring that women and newborns receive interventions that may prevent and treat birth-related complications. As facility deliveries increase in developing countries, there are concerns about service quality. Observation is the gold standard for clinical quality assessment, but existing observation-based measures of obstetric quality of care are lengthy and difficult to administer. There is a lack of consensus on quality indicators for routine intrapartum and immediate postpartum care, including essential newborn care. This study identified key dimensions of the quality of the process of intrapartum and immediate postpartum care (QoPIIPC) in facility deliveries and developed a quality assessment measure representing these dimensions.Methods and findingsGlobal maternal and neonatal care experts identified key dimensions of QoPIIPC through a modified Delphi process. Experts also rated indicators of these dimensions from a comprehensive delivery observation checklist used in quality surveys in sub-Saharan African countries. Potential QoPIIPC indices were developed from combinations of highly-rated indicators. Face, content, and criterion validation of these indices was conducted using data from observations of 1,145 deliveries in Kenya, Madagascar, and Tanzania (including Zanzibar). A best-performing index was selected, composed of 20 indicators of intrapartum/immediate postpartum care, including essential newborn care. This index represented most dimensions of QoPIIPC and effectively discriminated between poorly and well-performed deliveries.ConclusionsAs facility deliveries increase and the global community pays greater attention to the role of care quality in achieving further maternal and newborn mortality reduction, the QoPIIPC index may be a valuable measure. This index complements and addresses gaps in currently used quality assessment tools. Further evaluation of index usability and reliability is needed. The availability of a streamlined, comprehensive, and validated index may enable ongoing and efficient observation-based assessment of care quality during labor and delivery in sub-Saharan Africa, facilitating targeted quality improvement.

Project description:BackgroundVerbal autopsy is the main method used in countries with weak civil registration systems for estimating community causes of neonatal and 1-59-month-old deaths. However, validation studies of verbal autopsy methods are limited and assessment has been dependent on hospital-based studies, with uncertain implications for its validity in community settings. If the distribution of community deaths by cause was similar to that of facility deaths, or could be adjusted according to related demographic factors, then the causes of facility deaths could be used to estimate population causes.MethodsCauses of neonatal and 1-59-month-old deaths from verbal/social autopsy (VASA) surveys in four African countries were estimated using expert algorithms (EAVA) and physician coding (PCVA). Differences between facility and community deaths in individual causes and cause distributions were examined using chi-square and cause-specific mortality fractions (CSMF) accuracy, respectively. Multinomial logistic regression and random forest models including factors from the VASA studies that are commonly available in Demographic and Health Surveys were built to predict population causes from facility deaths.ResultsLevels of facility and community deaths in the four countries differed for one to four of 10 EAVA or PCVA neonatal causes and zero to three of 12 child causes. CSMF accuracy for facility compared to community deaths in the four countries ranged from 0.74 to 0.87 for neonates and 0.85 to 0.95 for 1-59-month-olds. Crude CSMF accuracy in the prediction models averaged 0.86 to 0.88 for neonates and 0.93 for 1-59-month-olds. Adjusted random forest prediction models increased average CSMF accuracy for neonates to, at most, 0.90, based on small increases in all countries.ConclusionsThere were few differences in facility and community causes of neonatal and 1-59-month-old deaths in the four countries, and it was possible to project the population CSMF from facility deaths with accuracy greater than the validity of verbal autopsy diagnoses. Confirmation of these findings in additional settings would warrant research into how medical causes of deaths in a representative sample of health facilities can be utilized to estimate the population causes of child death.

Project description:BackgroundActionable information about the readiness of health facilities is needed to inform quality improvement efforts in maternity care, but there is no consensus on the best approach to measure readiness. Many countries use the WHO's Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) or the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Programme's Service Provision Assessment to measure facility readiness. This study compares measures of childbirth service readiness based on SARA and DHS guidance to an index based on WHO's quality of maternal and newborn care standards.MethodsWe used cross-sectional data from Performance Monitoring for Action Ethiopia's 2019 survey of 406 health facilities providing childbirth services. We calculated childbirth service readiness scores using items based on SARA, DHS and WHO standards. For each, we used three aggregation methods for generating indices: simple addition, domain-weighted addition and principal components analysis. We compared central tendency, spread and item variation between the readiness indices; concordance between health facility scores and rankings; and correlations between readiness scores and delivery volume.ResultsIndices showed moderate agreement with one another, and all had a small but significant positive correlation with monthly delivery volume. Ties were more frequent for indices with fewer items. More than two-thirds of items in the relatively shorter SARA and DHS indices were widely (>90%) available in hospitals, and half of the SARA items were widely (>90%) available in health centres/clinics. Items based on the WHO standards showed greater variation and captured unique aspects of readiness (eg, quality improvement processes, actionable information systems) not included in either the SARA or DHS indices.ConclusionSARA and DHS indices rely on a small set of widely available items to assess facility readiness to provide childbirth care. Expanded selection of items based on the WHO standards can better differentiate between levels of service readiness.

Project description:BackgroundAfrica, and sub-Saharan Africa in particular, remains one of the regions with modest improvements to maternal and newborn survival and morbidity. Good quality intrapartum and early postpartum care in a health facility as well as delivery under the supervision of trained personnel is associated with improved maternal and newborn health outcomes and decreased mortality. We describe and contrast recent time trends in the scale and socio-economic inequalities in facility-based and private facility-based childbirth in sub-Saharan Africa.MethodsWe used Demographic and Health Surveys in two time periods (2000-2007 and 2008-2016) to analyse levels and time trends in facility-based and private facility-based deliveries for all live births in the five-year survey recall period to women aged 15-49. Household wealth quintiles were used for equity analysis. Absolute numbers of births by facility sector were calculated applying UN Population Division crude birth rates to the total country population.ResultsThe percentage of all live births occurring in health facilities varied across countries (5%-85%) in 2000-2007. In 2008-2016, this ranged from 22% to 92%. The lowest percentage of all births occurring in private facilities in 2000-2007 period was in Ethiopia (0.3%) and the highest in the Democratic Republic of Congo at 20.5%. By 2008-2016, this ranged from 0.6% in Niger to 22.3% in Gabon. Overall, the growth in the absolute numbers of births in facilities outpaced the growth in the percentage of births in facilities. The largest increases in absolute numbers of births occurred in public sector facilities in all countries. Overall, the percentage of births occurring in facilities was significantly lower for poorest compared to wealthiest women. As the percentage of facility births increased in all countries over time, the extent of wealth-based differences had reduced between the two time periods in most countries (median risk ratio in 2008-2016 was 2.02). The majority of countries saw a narrowing in both the absolute and relative difference in facility-based deliveries between poorest and wealthiest.ConclusionsThe growth in facility-based deliveries, which was largely driven by the public sector, calls for increased investments in effective interventions to improve service delivery and quality of life for the mother and newborn. The goal of universal health coverage to provide better quality services can be achieved by deploying interventions that are holistic in managing and regulating the private sector to enhance performance of the health care system in its entirety rather than interventions that only target service delivery in one sector.

Project description:BackgroundHealth facility characteristics associated with effective prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) coverage in sub-Saharan are poorly understood.Methodology/principal findingsWe conducted surveys in health facilities with active PMTCT services in Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, South Africa, and Zambia. Data was compiled via direct observation and exit interviews. We constructed composite scores to describe provision of PMTCT services across seven topical areas: antenatal quality, PMTCT quality, supplies available, patient satisfaction, patient understanding of medication, and infrastructure quality. Pearson correlations and Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) to account for clustering of facilities within countries were used to evaluate the relationship between the composite scores, total time of visit and select individual variables with PMTCT coverage among women delivering. Between July 2008 and May 2009, we collected data from 32 facilities; 78% were managed by the government health system. An opt-out approach for HIV testing was used in 100% of facilities in Zambia, 63% in Cameroon, and none in Côte d'Ivoire or South Africa. Using Pearson correlations, PMTCT coverage (median of 55%, (IQR: 33-68) was correlated with PMTCT quality score (rho?=?0.51; p?=?0.003); infrastructure quality score (rho?=?0.43; p?=?0.017); time spent at clinic (rho?=?0.47; p?=?0.013); patient understanding of medications score (rho?=?0.51; p?=?0.006); and patient satisfaction quality score (rho?=?0.38; p?=?0.031). PMTCT coverage was marginally correlated with the antenatal quality score (rho?=?0.304; p?=?0.091). Using GEE adjustment for clustering, the, antenatal quality score became more strongly associated with PMTCT coverage (p<0.001) and the PMTCT quality score and patient understanding of medications remained marginally significant.Conclusions/resultsWe observed a positive relationship between an antenatal quality score and PMTCT coverage but did not identify a consistent set of variables that predicted PMTCT coverage.

Project description:ImportanceRecent studies have reported conflicting findings regarding a potential association between analgesia used during labor and autism spectrum disorder in the offspring.ObjectiveTo evaluate whether neuraxial labor analgesia increases the risk of autism spectrum disorder in the offspring.Design, setting, and participantsThis cohort study included mother-child dyads who underwent vaginal delivery and were exposed to neuraxial labor analgesia. Delivery data were collected from the Medicaid Analytic eXtract (2005-2014) for mothers with public insurance and the IBM Health MarketScan Research Database (2005-2015) for mothers with private insurance. Data analysis was conducted from January to October 2021.ExposuresPresence of a procedure code indicating neuraxial labor analgesia.Main outcomes and measuresChildren with autism spectrum disorder, identified using a validated algorithm (positive predictive value: 94% [95% CI, 83%-99%]). Cumulative incidence curves stratified by exposure were assessed using Kaplan-Meier analyses. Hazard ratios were estimated through Cox proportional hazards regression, using propensity-score fine stratification for confounding control. Estimates from both insurance cohorts were combined through fixed-effects meta-analysis. Subsequently, results from these analyses were combined with existing published studies.ResultsThe cohort of mother-child dyads with public insurance consisted of 910 696 deliveries (mean [SD] maternal age, 24.3 [5.7] years; 286 025 [31.4%] Black mothers; 374 282 [41.1%] White mothers), with 484 752 (53.2%) being exposed to neuraxial labor analgesia. The cohort of mother-child dyads with private insurance included 696 883 deliveries (mean [SD] maternal age, 31.0 [4.5] years; race and ethnicity data not available), with 513 347 (73.7%) being exposed. Cumulative incidence of autism spectrum disorder by 10 years of age was 1.93% (95% CI, 1.73%-2.13%) among children in the exposed group vs 1.64% (95% CI, 1.51%-1.76%) among children in the unexposed group in the publicly insured cohort. Respective numbers were 1.33% (95% CI, 1.19%-1.46%) and 1.19% (95% CI, 0.99%-1.38%) in the privately insured cohort. Adjusting for potential confounders and pooling across both cohorts resulted in a hazard ratio of 1.08 (95% CI, 1.02-1.15). Results were consistent when additionally adjusting for empirically identified variables through high-dimensional propensity score analyses (pooled hazard ratio, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.00-1.14) or expanding the cohorts to include cesarean deliveries and assisted vaginal deliveries (pooled hazard ratio, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.03-1.12). Meta-analysis of this study and recently published observational studies yielded similar findings with a pooled hazard ratio of 1.10 (95% CI, 1.06-1.13).Conclusions and relevanceAlthough a small increase in risk cannot be ruled out, the combined evidence from observational studies does not support the notion that neuraxial labor analgesia is associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorder.

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Methodological development of tools to measure how women are treated during facility-based childbirth in four countries: labor observation and community survey.

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Methodological development of tools to measure how women are treated during facility-based childbirth in four countries: labor observation and community survey.

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