Latest Articles
- Beyond the Safe Motherhood Initiative: Accelerated Action Urgently Needed to End Preventable Maternal Mortality
Many countries will need to double, or more than double, their current annual rate of reduction of maternal mortality to ensure sufficient progress toward national targets and the global Sustainable Development Goals. Dedication to the principles and actions of quality, equity, dignity, social justice, and human rights are key.
- The Net Promoter Score (NPS) for Insight Into Client Experiences in Sexual and Reproductive Health Clinics
The NPS measures a customer’s likeliness to recommend a company to a friend or colleague on a 0-to-10 scale. Pilot testing in 4 countries suggests the NPS can also be successfully used in nonprofit clinics and among low-literacy populations. Combining the NPS with client demographic and service-use data can provide a powerful tool for identifying populations for whom the client experience can be improved.
- Review of Grain Fortification Legislation, Standards, and Monitoring Documents
The majority of countries with mandatory grain fortification requirements document the technical specifications for grain fortification, such as allowable food vehicles and fortification levels required. Most document systems for monitoring. However, detailed protocols, descriptions of roles and responsibilities, means to support the cost of regulation, enforcement strategies, and methods for reporting monitoring results to stakeholders are generally lacking.
- Increasing Contraceptive Use Among Young Married Couples in Bihar, India: Evidence From a Decade of Implementation of the PRACHAR Project
Critical program elements to improving voluntary contraceptive use among married youth included: (1) use of a socioecological intervention model of behavior change; (2) engaging both women and men; and (3) calibrating interventions to different moments in the life cycle of adolescents and youth. Trade-offs between intensive NGO-led models and less intensive government-led models occurred in effectiveness, scale of interventions, and sustained behavior changes.
- Monitoring Progress in Equality for the Sustainable Development Goals: A Case Study of Meeting Demand for Family Planning
As demand for family planning has increasingly been satisfied, disparities between groups within a country have also generally declined but persist. To monitor disparity across countries and over time, we recommend comparing met demand by wealth quintile because it is most comparable to interpret and highly correlated with disparity by education, residence, and region. Within country, comparing disparity in met demand across geographic region can identify populations with greater need for programmatic purposes.
- Long-Lasting Insecticidal Nets for Malaria Control in Myanmar and Nigeria: Lessons From the Past, Tools for the Future
While having saved many lives over the past decade, continued dependence on mass distribution of free long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) is not sufficient and may not be sustainable. Programs must be enabled with flexible policy and technical options to place LLINs within a larger context of multisectoral partnerships and integrated vector management, avoiding what happened in the DDT era, where there was overreliance implementing a uniform solution to a complex problem.
- Is It Time to Move Beyond Visual Inspection With Acetic Acid for Cervical Cancer Screening?
Newly emerging low-cost molecular assays and improved visual tests for cervical cancer screening call into question the role of visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA). VIA-based screening continues to offer a low-cost, single-visit approach for screening. However, VIA is highly rater-dependent and has problematic accuracy. RNA, DNA, and protein tests are now available. They offer greater accuracy and the option for self-sampling, but the testing kits are expensive. As these new options continue to improve, the time to move beyond VIA is fast approaching.
- Evidence-Based Programs, Yes—But What About More Program-Based Evidence?
Policy makers and program managers are better enabled to draw relevant lessons from implementation research and program experience elsewhere when there is richer documentation on what was done and what key contextual factors may have influenced outcomes. Newly developed Program Reporting Standards from WHO provide helpful guidance on what is needed for optimally useful documentation.
- Eliminating Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV by 2030: 5 Strategies to Ensure Continued Progress
To keep up momentum in preventing mother-to-child transmission we propose: (1) advocating for greater political and financial commitment; (2) targeting high-risk populations such as adolescent girls and young women; (3) implementing novel service delivery models such as community treatment groups; (4) performing regular viral load monitoring during pregnancy and postpartum to ensure suppression before delivery and during breastfeeding; and (5) harnessing technology in monitoring and evaluation and HIV diagnostics.
- Doing What We Do, Better: Improving Our Work Through Systematic Program Reporting
WHO has recently published program reporting standards to guide the type of information that reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and related health programs should document to promote cross-program learning. We strongly encourage our partners and key stakeholders to make use of the new standards as part of their routine program reporting.