MOMI - Missed Opportunities in Maternal and Infant Health: reducing maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity in the year after childbirth through combined facility- and community-based interventions

The main objective is to improve maternal and newborn health through a focus on the postpartum period, adopting context-specific strategies to strengthen health care delivery and services at both facility and community level in four sub-Saharan countries (Burkina Faso, Kenya, Malawi and Mozambique).

 

The research project is based on the hypothesis that there are significant missed opportunities for improving maternal and child health which could be prevented and that an improved configuration of, and emphasis on, postpartum services will reduce maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality. The research will therefore examine how postpartum services could best be organised to reduce maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality and be provided within existing health systems and constraints.

MOMI is a health system research project. The overarching study design is a longitudinal, multiple ‘case study’, with the ‘case’ being a ‘health district’ in one of the African study countries.

 

Based on the results of a maternal and newborn health policy and system analysis (year 1) in each research site, context-specific packages of interventions to strengthen postpartum health care delivery will be designed (year 2) and implemented (year 2 to year 5) at each site.
The effectiveness and impact of these intervention packages on the respective health systems as well as on population (maternal and newborn) health outcomes will be studied (year 3 to year 5).
The individual and cross-country analysis of the effectiveness of the postpartum intervention packages will create knowledge on health system options for delivery of postpartum care.
Planned dissemination of these findings will enable us to provide health policy recommendations concerning postpartum health care delivery applicable to other sub-Saharan African countries, or low- and middle- income countries elsewhere (year 5).
Capacity strengthening, and reporting and dissemination of research results will occur throughout the research cycle, with the latter two components a major feature of the final project phase.