Health Care Intervention Research- Improving Pre-natal and Maternal Care

Summary

Besides a dramatic lack of financial and human resources in developing countries, health care is additionally endangered by quality deficiencies caused by low staff motivation. This lack of motivation leads to an insufficient translation of knowledge into optimal utilization of resources. The "know-do" gap represents a challenge that must be addressed to strengthen health services performance towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is in particular true for some sensitive sectors like pre-natal and maternal health care. General objective of this research is to improve maternal health through better pre-natal and maternal care services offered by better motivated health workers. A computer-assisted clinical decision support system (CDSS) will be developed, implemented and tested aiming at (I) quality improvement of maternal and newborn care and (II) assessment of provider's performance. Based on this tool a commonly agreed incentive scheme to increase motivation will be shaped and tested in three SSA - countries, namely Burkina, Ghana, and Tanzania.

The incentive scheme might contain both non-monetary and monetary incentives and will be designed according to the human resource policy in the three countries. The planned approach is an implementation study with control arms containing one hospital and 6 first line health facilities in each of the study districts and an equal number of facilities in the control arm. A set of indicators for measurement of changes in quality of delivered services will be identified in order to follow up the sustainability and effectiveness of the strategies after their implementation. The study findings will allow understanding the important factors of staff motivation and facilitate adequate management for improvement of maternal and neonatal health care. "Knowing is not enough, we must apply; Wanting to do, is not enough, we must do it1"

\- J.W. v. Goethe

Conditions

• Antenatal Care and Delivery

Interventions

OTHER

CDSS

Clinical Decision Support System

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University Ghent

  collaborator OTHER

• Centre de Recherche en Sante de Nouna, Burkina Faso

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• Navrongo Health Research Centre, Ghana

  collaborator OTHER

• Karolinska Institutet

  collaborator OTHER

• Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences

  collaborator OTHER

• Heidelberg University

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

12 Years

Max Age

45 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2009-05-31

Primary Completion

2010-09-30

Completion

2014-04-30

Countries

• Germany

Study Locations