Health Topics
- Individual, Community, and Health Facility Predictors of Postnatal Care Utilization in Rural Tanzania: A Multilevel Analysis
PNC visits are an opportunity to promote physical and emotional recovery, offer infant care and feeding advice, detect and treat postpartum complications, and discuss birth spacing. Offering PNC in nearby health facilities with adequate quality of care can increase usage rates.
- Defining Collective Priorities: Research and Learning Agendas for Family Planning Across 6 Countries
Policymakers and national stakeholders can cocreate FP research and learning agendas to identify and prioritize evidence gaps and foster responsive research, thereby driving progress toward increasingly evidence-based FP programming and policy.
- Assessing Use, Usefulness, and Application of the High Impact Practices in Family Planning Briefs and Strategic Planning Guides
This study highlights the important role that products like the High Impact Practices in Family Planning briefs and strategic planning guides have in increasing accessibility of evidence and experiential knowledge and informing public health practices and programs.
- Strengthening Kampala’s Urban Referral System for Maternal and Newborn Care Through Establishment of an Emergency Call and Dispatch Center
An emergency call and ambulance dispatch center facilitated maternal and newborn transport, and a smartphone application helped deploy and track ambulances to improve coordination and efficiency in emergency case referral and transport.
- A Participatory Comic Book Workshop to Improve Youth-Friendly Post-Rape Care in a Humanitarian Context in Uganda: A Case Study
Participatory comic books offer a novel approach to strengthening health care providers’ understanding of refugee youth’s post-rape care needs and can be embedded in provider training in humanitarian contexts.
- The Role of Sudanese Doctors in the United Kingdom in Mitigating COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Their Diaspora Communities
A COVID-19 vaccine awareness campaign conducted by Sudanese doctors helped to mitigate vaccine hesitancy among Sudanese diaspora groups in the United Kingdom.
- The Cost of Providing Comprehensive HIV Services to Key Populations: An Analysis of the LINKAGES Program in Kenya and Malawi
A cost analysis of comprehensive HIV services for key populations at higher risk of infection in Kenya and Malawi showed that costs can be substantial at all program implementation levels, not just service delivery; all these costs should be considered during program planning.
- Midpoint Reflections on USAID HIV Local Partner Transition Efforts
We discuss 5 key factors that have facilitated efforts to transition the majority of the USAID HIV/AIDS portfolio to direct funding through local organizations, including partner country governments.
- Determinants of Kangaroo Mother Care Uptake for Small Babies Along the Health Facility to Community Continuum in Karnataka, India
In Karnataka, India, the initiation and duration of kangaroo mother care (KMC) for small babies improved following KMC support for mothers and family members at the health facility and improved KMC competence of health care workers.
- Exploring Upward and Downward Provider Biases in Family Planning: The Case of Parity
The authors conceptualize a distinction between “upward” provider bias that occurs when providers pressure or encourage clients to adopt contraception and “downward” provider bias in family planning that discourages contraceptive use.

