Networks of Care for Maternal and Newborn Health: An Approach to Strengthening Relational Elements for Quality and Respectful Care

Despite global progress in reducing preventable maternal and newborn deaths, high rates of maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality continue, mainly due to poor quality of care. Additional transformational and catalytic approaches are needed to provide high-quality respectful patient-centered care to further improvements in maternal and newborn well-being and survival. One documented successful approach is Networks of Care (NoC).

NoC is an innovative approach to optimize health system functioning, intentionally creating and strengthening health system relationships to support transformational change in maternal and newborn health. NoC emphasizes relational elements, such as empowered multidisciplinary teams, respect, teamwork, trust, communication, collaboration, leadership, and supportive supervision and mentorship, which differentiates it from other health systems strengthening approaches. A functional NoC enables collaborative learning and coordinated continuity of respectful and quality care to optimize linkages for efficient and resilient health systems, and to ultimately improve maternal and newborn survival and well-being. Future opportunities include scaling up the NoC approach at national and subnational levels and addressing gaps in the evidence base.

The NoC approach has been implemented in many contexts. This panel will provide an overview of the NoC approach and highlight examples and results of NoC from three counties: Kenya (Networks of Care in Makueni County), Nepal (Networks of Safety – One Heart Worldwide), and Zambia (Integrated SRMNH program).