The Impact of Longitudinal Midwifery Mentorship on the Availability of Essential Drugs and Supplies in Five Primary Health Care Facilities in Blantyre District, Malawi

Nurses and midwives form the backbone of maternal and newborn health care delivery in Malawi, and as such should be at the core of interventions aimed at improving respective health outcomes. The University of California San Francisco Global Action in Nursing (GAIN) project aims to improve maternal and newborn health by supporting nurses and midwives with intensive training and longitudinal bedside mentorship. GAIN activities include empowering nurses and midwives to monitor and advocate for the availability of essential drugs and supplies to enable high-quality health care delivery.

Impact of Midwifery Regulatory Environments on Maternal Health Outcomes in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) 

We created a measure of midwifery policy and regulatory environments, then correlated a country's score with access to midwives and maternal health outcomes. Because evidence increasingly shows that access alone is insufficient to transform outcomes, we incorporated quality of care outcomes such as patient experience to measure the impact of the policy and regulatory environment on the care midwives are able to provide. We hypothesized that countries with stronger policy and regulatory environments would have higher rates of access to midwives and improved perinatal outcomes.

Fear as an Underlying Perception Determines Midwifery Care Provision in Southern Tanzania: A Qualitative Study Using Co-design 

High-quality midwifery care plays a vital role in reducing maternal and perinatal mortality as well as increasing facility-based delivery rates. Midwifery care providers work in a complex and often unpredictable environment, more so in settings with high morbidity and mortality, low staffing levels, poor equipment, and frequent commodity stock out. The aim of this study was to understand how this environment is shaping care provision, including decision-making and communication in midwifery care, in Southern Tanzania.

Reducing Intrapartum Stillbirths among Pregnant Women in Southeastern Liberia: A Nursing- and Midwifery-Led Quality Improvement Initiative 

Of the 2.6 million stillbirths globally, 98% occur in low- and middle-income countries. Roughly half of stillbirths happen during labor, referred to as fresh stillbirths (FSBs), the majority of them preventable. In 2019, J.J. Dossen Memorial Hospital (JJD) in Liberia reported 46 FSBs per 1,000 births. The hospital targets a stillbirth rate of 12/1,000 births or less by 2030. This quality improvement (QI) project aimed to reduce FSB rates by 56.5%, from 46/1,000 births in 2019 to 20/1,000 births in 2021, by focusing on gaps in clinical care.