Our Work
Alongside our successful programme of Community Health Groups, Women and Children First are testing new innovations to support maternal and infant healthcare in the developing world.
Community Health Groups - PLA-MNH
A PLA-MNH group meeting in rural Malawi
Women and Children First form mother and child groups, guided by trained local female facilitators who:
Identify the most important health challenges
Design local solutions
Lead their communities to implement these solutions
Evaluate their results.
There is extensive evidence supporting their potential:
Effective: Seven cluster randomised controlled trials and a meta-analysis have shown that this approach can reduce maternal mortality by 49% and neonatal mortality by 33% when at least a third of pregnant women attend a group.
Cost-effective: By WHO standards, with a cost of between $1,457 to $8,670 per neonatal death averted.
Equitable: It is pro-poor and can contribute to an equitable reduction in neonatal mortality across socio-economic strata.
Sustainable: Up to 80% of groups remain active beyond the end of project funding.
Scalable: There is evidence this approach can be scaled through community health worker structures. In India, delivered through frontline health workers supported by the Ministry of Health, these programs reduced neonatal mortality by 24% (26% in the poorest quintiles) at a cost of $385 per death averted.
Toys with health messaging - Play++
Play++ toys are a low-cost, simple and scalable innovation.
Toys are enhanced to support stimulating play and early learning opportunities for children, while supporting responsive caregiving that protects children from threats and improves their nutrition and health care.
Play++ toys can cost as little as an additional $0.04 per child.
For example, adding stickers depicting key child illness danger signs to a shape sorter so that as the child engages in developmentally stimulating play with this toy, the caregiver is reminded of what the danger signs are and when to seek urgent medical attention.
Personalised Calendars - Re-cal-l
Re-cal-l is a simple, analogue, personalised health appointment reminder system for women and children in poor countries, particularly in areas with low mobile phone usage.
In the Re-cal-l system community health workers receive basic training to identify pregnant women in their catchment areas and visit them at home to tailor personalised wall calendars, using a paper-based ‘contact calculator’ to ensure accuracy.
The calendars display all their recommended health and immunisation appointments before, during and after birth in a comprehensive and accessible way – supporting timely and complete uptake of these services.
Community health workers also use dates from the calendars to plan their routine home visits, ensuring they are there to provide support and advice when they are most needed.
At scale, the full Re-cal-l system could cost as little as $3.75 to reach and support a mother/child pair.
© Women & Children First (UK)
Registered Charity No. 1085096
Registered Office: Women and Children First, 483 Green Lanes, London, N13 4BS
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7700 6309 | E-mail: info@womenandchildrenfirst.org.uk
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