Index by author

The global health community should mainstream urban health and implement urban health programs to address the triple health burden of communicable diseases, noncommunicable diseases, and injuries in low- and middle-income countries.

Emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) are extremely safe and do not interfere with implantation. Yet many surveyed physicians in India did not know that there are no contraindications to using ECPs, and many had negative attitudes about ECP users. Most were against having ECPs available over-the-counter and wanted to impose age restrictions. Efforts are needed to address such misconceptions that might lead to limiting ECP availability.

Modern quality improvement approaches enabled hospital staff to analyze barriers and identify solutions for “how” to integrate family planning into postpartum care. Private spaces for postpartum family planning (PPFP) counseling, along with involving husbands and mothers-in-law in counseling, substantially increased the percentage of women receiving PPFP counseling and their preferred method before discharge. Self-reported pregnancy was also significantly lower up to 18 months post-discharge compared with women receiving routine services.

The proportion of pregnant women receiving 4 or more antenatal care (ANC) visits has no necessary relationship with the actual content of those visits. We propose a simple alternative to measure program performance that aggregates key services that are common across countries and measured in Demographic and Health Surveys, such as blood pressure measurement, tetanus toxoid vaccination, first ANC visit before 4 months gestation, urine testing, counseling about pregnancy danger signs, and iron–folate supplementation.