Wednesday, July 5, 2017

GHSP Journal, Volume 5, Issue 2

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GHSP. GLOBAL HEALTH: SCIENCE AND PRACTICE. Dedicated to what works in global health programs. Photo: A pregnant woman gets her stomach measured.

Image: A health worker examines a pregnant woman during an antenatal care consultation at Eduardo Mondlane Health Center in Chimoio, Manica, Mozambique. ©2015 Arturo Sanabria, Courtesy of Photoshare.

Global Health: Science and Practice (GHSP), a no-fee, peer-reviewed, open-access journal, is targeted to global health professionals, particularly program implementers, to validate their experiences and program results by peer reviewers and to share them with the greater global health community.

June 2017 | Volume 5 | Number 2

Read the June 2017 issue of GHSP to find answers to these questions and more. View a list of all articles by article type below or online.

Visit the GHSP website to read and comment on the articles, and subscribe to receive alerts when new articles and issues are published.

Table of Contents

EDITORIALS

Reducing Sepsis Deaths in Newborns Through Home Visitation and Active Case Detection: Is it Realistic?

Severe bacterial infection remains one of the major causes of newborn deaths in low-income countries. A key challenge for reducing this burden is making definitive treatment more easily available. Active case detection through early postnatal home visits can work under trial conditions but is difficult to implement at scale under routine conditions. In many settings, making treatment available at peripheral-level primary health care facilities may be more feasible.

Stephen Hodgins, Robert McPherson

Not Ready for Primetime: Challenges of Antenatal Ultrasound in Low- and Middle- Income Country Settings

Even under optimized trial conditions, antenatal ultrasound was difficult to implement in Equateur Province, DRC. Moreover, the broader study across 5 countries failed to find an impact on pregnancy outcomes. Use of antenatal ultrasound screening appears not ready for wide application in low- and middle-income countries.

Long-Acting HIV Treatment and Prevention: Closer to the Threshold

Substantial progress has been made toward viable, practical long-acting approaches to deliver HIV treatment and prevention through: (1) continued improvements in long-acting antiretrovirals (ARVs); (2) better innovative delivery systems; and (3) collaboration of willing partners to advance new ARVs. More progress on those 3 fronts is still needed to arrive at the goal of optimized HIV treatment and prevention for all who would benefit—and of finally controlling the HIV epidemic.

Matthew Barnhart

COMMENTARIES

The Importance of Mental Well-Being for Health Professionals During Complex Emergencies: It Is Time We Take It Seriously

We call on humanitarian aid organizations to integrate proven mental health strategies to protect the mental health of their workforce and improve staff capacity to provide care for vulnerable populations. Such strategies could include:

  • Pre-deployment training
  • Team building
  • Narrative Exposure Therapy
  • Art therapy
  • Physical exercise
  • Mindfulness or contemplative techniques
  • Mind-body exercises
  • Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing

Mary Surya, Dilshad Jaff, Barbara Stilwell, Johanna Schubert

Integrated Person-Centered Health Care for All Women During Pregnancy: Implementing World Health Organization Recommendations on Antenatal Care for a Positive Pregnancy Experience

The 2016 WHO guideline on routine antenatal care (ANC) recommends several interventions to improve quality of care and increase use of services including:

  • Midwife-led continuity of care throughout the antenatal, intrapartum, and postnatal periods
  • Task shifting components of ANC, including promotion of health-related behaviors and distribution of nutrition supplements
  • Recruitment and retention of health workers in rural and remote areas
  • Community mobilization to improve communication and support to pregnant women
  • Women-held case notes
  • A model with a minimum of 8 antenatal care contacts

Sarah de Masi, Maurice Bucagu, Özge Tunçalp, Juan Pablo Peña-Rosas, Theresa Lawrie, Olufemi T Oladapo, Metin Gülmezoglu

ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Effect on Neonatal Mortality of Newborn Infection Management at Health Posts When Referral Is Not Possible: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Rural Ethiopia

Health Extension Workers (HEWs), in general, properly provided antibiotic treatment of possible severe bacterial infections in newborns at the health post level. But only about half of newborns estimated to have infections in the intervention area received treatment by HEWs, and home visits and referrals declined in the final months of the study. Cluster-level analysis suggests a mortality reduction consistent with this level of treatment coverage, although the finding did not reach statistical significance.

Tedbabe Degefie Hailegebriel, Brian Mulligan, Simon Cousens, Bereket Mathewos, Steve Wall, Abeba Bekele, Jeanne Russell, Deborah Sitrin, Biruk Tensou, Joy Lawn, Joseph de Graft Johnson, Hailemariam Legesse, Sirak Hailu, Assaye Nigussie, Bogale Worku, Abdullah Baqui

Improving Adherence to Essential Birth Practices Using the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist With Peer Coaching: Experience From 60 Public Health Facilities in Uttar Pradesh, India

Implementation of the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist with peer coaching resulted in >90% adherence to 35 of 39 essential birth practices among birth attendants after 8 months, but adherence to some practices was lower when the coach was absent.

Megan Marx Delaney, Pinki Maji, Tapan Kalita, Nabihah Kara, Darpan Rana, Krishan Kumar, Jenny Masoinneuve, Simon Cousens, Atul A Gawande, Vishwajeet Kumar, Bhala Kodkany, Narender Sharma, Rajiv Saurastri, Vinay Pratap Singh, Lisa R Hirschhorn, Katherine EA Semrau, Rebecca Firestone

The BetterBirth Program: Pursuing Effective Adoption and Sustained Use of the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist Through Coaching-Based Implementation in Uttar Pradesh, India

The BetterBirth Program relied on carefully structured coaching that was multilevel, collaborative, and provider-centered to motivate birth attendants to use the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist and improve adherence to essential birth practices. It was scaled to 60 sites as part of a randomized controlled trial in Uttar Pradesh, India.

Nabihah Kara, Rebecca Firestone, Tapan Kalita, Atul A Gawande, Vishwajeet Kumar, Bhala Kodkany, Rajiv Saurastri, Vinay Pratap Singh, Pinki Maji, Ami Karlage, Lisa R Hirschhorn, Katherine EA Semrau; on behalf of the BetterBirth Trial Group

Limited Service Availability, Readiness, and Use of Facility-Based Delivery Care in Haiti: A Study Linking Health Facility Data and Population Data

Proximity to a health facility offering delivery services and readiness of the facilities to provide such services were poor in both rural and urban areas outside of Port-au-Prince. Availability of a proximate facility was significantly associated with women in rural and urban areas delivering at a facility, as was the quality of delivery care available at the facilities but only in urban areas.

Wenjuan Wang, Michelle Winner, Clara R Burgert-Brucker

Benefits and Limitations of Text Messages to Stimulate Higher Learning Among Community Providers: Participants' Views of an mHealth Intervention to Support Continuing Medical Education in Vietnam

The original intention was to deliver technical content through brief text messages to stimulate participants to undertake deeper learning. While participants appreciated the convenience and relevance of the text messages, their scores of higher-order knowledge did not improve. The intervention may not have been successful because the messages lacked depth and interactivity, and participants were not explicitly encouraged to seek deeper learning.

Lora L Sabin, Anna Larson Williams, Bao Ngoc Le, Augusta R Herman, Ha Viet Nguyen, Rebecca R Albanese, Wenjun Xiong, Hezekiah OA Shobiye, Nafisa Halim, Lien Thi Ngoc Tran, Marion McNabb, Hai Hoang, Ariel Falconer, Tam Thi Thanh Nguyen, Christopher J. Gill

Availability and Quality of Family Planning Services in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: High Potential for Improvement

A few facilities provided good access to and quality of family planning services, particularly urban, private, and higher-level facilities. Yet only one-third offered family planning services at all, and only 20% of these facilities met a basic measure of quality. Condoms, oral contraceptives, and injectables were most available, whereas long-acting, permanent methods, and emergency contraception were least available. Responding to the DRC's high unmet need for family planning calls for substantial expansion of services.

Dieudonné Mpunga, JP Lumbayi, Nelly Dikamba, Albert Mwembo, Mala Ali Mapatano, Gilbert Wembodinga

Increasing Access to Family Planning Choices Through Public-Sector Social Franchising: The Experience of Marie Stopes International in Mali

While social franchising has been highly successful with private-sector providers, in Mali the approach was expanded to public-sector community health clinics. From 2012 to 2015, these clinics served >120,000 family planning clients, 78% of whom chose long-acting reversible methods. Many clients were young, poor, and had not been using a method during the 3 months prior to their visit.

Judy Gold, Eva Burke, Boubacar Cissé, Anna Mackay, Gillian Eva, Brendan Hayes

Reviews

Inequitable Access to Health Care by the Poor in Community-Based Health Insurance Programs: A Review of Studies From Low-and Middle-Income Countries

The poor lack equitable access to health care in community-based health insurance schemes. Flexible installment payment plans, subsidized premiums, and elimination of co-pays can increase enrollment and use of health services by the poor.

Chukwuemeka A Umeh, Frank G Feeley

Field Action Reports

Challenges of Implementing Antenatal Ultrasound Screening in a Rural Study Site: A Case Study From the Democratic Republic of the Congo

In the context of a well-resourced research project on obstetric ultrasound, we encountered major challenges, including security and maintenance of the equipment, electricity requirements, health systems integration, and a variety of other systems issues. We propose future ultrasound interventions have at minimum a functioning health system with skilled and motivated staff, access to a referral hospital capable of providing affordable and higher levels of care, and feasible transportation means.

David Swanson, Adrien Lokangaka, Melissa Bauserman, Jonathan Swanson, Robert O Nathan, Antoinette Tshefu, Elizabeth M McClure, Carl L Bose, Ana Garces, Sarah Saleem, Elwyn Chomba, Fabian Esamai, Robert L Goldenberg

INNOVATIONS

Design Improvements for Personal Protective Equipment Used in Ebola and Other Epidemic Outbreaks

We redesigned the personal protective equipment ensemble widely used during the 2014 Ebola outbreak into a relatively simpler and more versatile coverall and hood, to improve protection and usability for frontline workers treating patients in infectious disease outbreaks around the world.

Margaret Glancey, Patience Osei, William Alexander Patterson, Matthew Petney, Laura Scavo, Chandrakant Ruparelia, Soumyadipta Acharya, Youseph Yazdi

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Cost of Contraceptive Implant Removal Services Must Be Considered When Responding to the Growing Demand for Removals

Jill E Sergison, Randy M Stalter, Rebecca L Callahan, Kate H Rademacher, Markus J Steiner

GHSP is supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development and published by the Knowledge for Health project at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

Learn more about GHSP on its website: www.ghspjournal.org.

USAID Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | Center for Communication Programs Knowledge for Health

The KMS Project is sending these announcements on behalf of USAID's Bureau for Global Health. The KMS Project is located at 1300 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Suite 440, Washington DC 20004 (202) 660-1860 GovDelivery logo

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