Latest Articles
- Operations research to add postpartum family planning to maternal and neonatal health to improve birth spacing in Sylhet District, Bangladesh
This quasi-experimental study integrated family planning, including the Lactational Amenorrhea Method, into community-based maternal and newborn health care and encouraged transition to other modern methods after 6 months to increase birth-to-pregnancy intervals. Community-based distribution of pills, condoms, and injectables, and referral for clinical methods, was added to meet women's demand.
- mHealth innovations as health system strengthening tools: 12 common applications and a visual framework
This new framework lays out 12 common mHealth applications used as health systems strengthening innovations across the reproductive health continuum.
- Achieving better maternal and newborn outcomes: coherent strategy and pragmatic, tailored implementation
Maternal and newborn health program effort needs to: shift from mere contact to the actual content or substance of care; respond better to local context; ensure delivery of all key interventions needed during pregnancy, labor and delivery, and postnatally; and actively monitor performance to manage and improve programs.
- “Man, what took you so long?” Social and individual factors affecting adult attendance at voluntary medical male circumcision services in Tanzania
In a study in Tanzania, men and women generally supported male circumcision; however, cultural values that the procedure is most appropriate before adolescence, shame associated with being circumcised at an older age, and concerns about the post-surgical abstinence period have led to low uptake among older men.
- A journal for global health programming
GHSP aims to improve how programs function at scale, targeting implementers who actually support and carry out programs across all of global health. Thus, we emphasize specific implementation details, using a crisp, accessible, interactive style.
- Reducing child global undernutrition at scale in Sofala Province, Mozambique, using Care Group Volunteers to communicate health messages to mothers
Care Group peer-to-peer behavior change communication improved child undernutrition at scale in rural Mozambique and has the potential to substantially reduce under-5 mortality in priority countries at very low cost.
- Chlorhexidine for umbilical cord care: game-changer for newborn survival?
A simple technology with potential to prevent 500,000 global neonatal deaths annually.
- Meeting the community halfway to reduce maternal deaths? Evidence from a community-based maternal death review in Uttar Pradesh, India
Even in the face of vigorous commitment to improving maternal health services in India, inadequate staffing, supplies, and equipment at health facilities, as well as transportation costs and delays in referral, appear to contribute to a substantial proportion of maternal deaths in a representative district in Uttar Pradesh.
- Women's growing desire to limit births in sub-Saharan Africa: meeting the challenge
Contrary to conventional wisdom, many sub-Saharan African women—often at young ages—have an unmet need for family planning to limit future births, and many current limiters do not use the most effective contraceptive methods. Family planning programs must improve access to a wide range of modern contraceptive methods and address attitudinal and knowledge barriers if they are to meet women's needs.