Optimizing Pre-discharge Care: Development and Testing of a Postnatal Screening and Counselling Tool to Identify High-Risk Mothers and Babies

In Bangladesh, rising institutional delivery rates offer opportunities to optimize pre-discharge counselling and screening to identify needed follow-up for those with complications and encourage continuity of care, including postnatal care (PNC). Few existing resources are available to guide pre-discharge counselling and to identify care needed for high-risk mother-baby dyads.

Impact of Family Care Training for Postnatal Outcomes in India 

The Care Companion Program (CCP) is an in-hospital multitopic skill-based training programme provided to families to improve post-discharge maternal and neonatal health. The structured program uses the existing health workforce, mainly nurses or health counselors, within the government health systems to give regular group training sessions while the mother is still in the hospital. The content and tools needed for this training are contextualized to specific geographies. Involving the entire family and including multiple families together is hypothesized to improve behavior uptake. The states of Punjab and Karnataka in India piloted the programme in 11 district hospitals in July 2017, and we report results from the first evaluation of this program.

Postnatal and Postpartum Utilization among Women Receiving Group Antenatal Care vs. Routine Individualized Care: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial in Ghana 

The purpose of this study is to assess behavioural differences in care-seeking patterns related to postnatal and postpartum care among women randomized to group-based antenatal care (intervention) or routine individual antenatal care (control) in Eastern region of Ghana. We hypothesized that mothers and infants of mothers randomized into the intervention group receiving group antenatal care will have better attendance at postnatal and postpartum visits than women in in the control group.

A Qualitative Exploration of Strategies for Improving Uptake of Postnatal Care Services in Thyolo, Malawi 

Although postnatal care services form a critical component of the cascade of care in maternal, newborn, and child health, the uptake of the services has remained low worldwide. Malawi has made remarkable progress in the proportion of women attending antenatal care (95%) as well as delivering at a facility (90%), but has failed to realize the same rates with postnatal care (PNC), which is below 50%. This study explored and prioritized the strategies for optimizing the uptake of postnatal care services uptake in Thyolo, Malawi.