Latest Articles
- Successful use of tablet personal computers and wireless technologies for the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey
Using tablet personal computers and wireless technologies in place of paper-based questionnaires to administer the Nepal DHS in a geographically diverse setting appeared to improve data quality and reduce data collection time. Challenges include inconsistent electricity supply, safe storage and transport of equipment, and screen readability issues under direct sunlight, which limited confidential interview spaces.
- Client-centered counseling improves client satisfaction with family planning visits: evidence from Irbid, Jordan
In Irbid, Jordan, a combination of community outreach, using home visits, plays, women's groups, and religious leaders, and improved client-provider counseling based on the “Consult and Choose” approach increased family planning demand and client satisfaction. Service statistic trends suggest increased contraceptive use.
- High and equitable mass vitamin A supplementation coverage in Sierra Leone: a post-event coverage survey
In Sierra Leone, an intensive mass vitamin A supplementation (VAS) campaign to reduce under-5 mortality reached over 90% of children ages 6–59 months, eliminating coverage disparities among districts and between age groups. Delivering VAS with other essential maternal and child health interventions was key to the success.
- Improving performance of Zambia Defence Force antiretroviral therapy providers: evaluation of a standards-based approach
A detailed standards-based performance approach modestly improved providers' performance and facility readiness to offer antiretroviral therapy. The approach included mutually reinforcing activities: (1) training, (2) supportive supervision, (3) assessments of service quality, and (4) facility-based action plans.
- Focusing on implementation: the power of executing many small advances well
Success often comes through many small, incremental, well-executed improvements.
- Use of modern contraception increases when more methods become available: analysis of evidence from 1982–2009
International data over 27 years show that as each additional contraceptive method became available to most of the population, overall modern contraceptive use rose. But in 2009 only 3.5 methods, on average, were available to at least half the population in surveyed countries. Family planning programs should strive to provide widespread access to a range of methods.
- Multiplicity in public health supply systems: a learning agenda
Supply chain integration—merging products for health programs into a single supply chain—tends to be the dominant model in health sector reform. However, multiplicity in a supply system may be justified as a risk management strategy that can better ensure product availability, advance specific health program objectives, and increase efficiency.
- The 6 domains of behavior change: the missing health system building block
Behavior is crucial throughout global health interventions. The discipline of behavior change offers distinct expertise needed across 6 different domains of behavior. Such expertise is in short supply, however. We will not have effective and sustainable health systems, nor achieve our ambitious global health goals, without seriously addressing behavior change.
- 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.