Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

earAccess is a Canadian for-profit social enterprise that provides access to hearing devices in LMIC settings at a 50-70% discount from market rates. To date, With TTS follow-on funding earAccess will leverage their experience and innovative service model to rollout a holistic solution to provide hearing services for children under 5 years of age.

The project will deliver Survive and Thrive in Brazil, a an evidence-based curriculum adapted for the Brazilian context to support caregivers delivered by a new cadre of specially trained workers called Child Development Agents (CDAs) that are exclusively focused on child development. The curriculum is an adaptation of Reach Up, an evidence- based program that includes detailed guidance and activities for CDAs for each interactions with parents, formalized training manuals, and toy making manuals.

We are working to scale integrated Reproductive Maternal Newborn and Child Health (RMNCH) and Non-Communicable Disease(NCD) services for under-served rural communities where the burden is under-estimated and outcomes are poor. We are anchoring this intervention on our model of healthcare delivery: Ubuntu-Afya Medical Centers, which we seek to scale. The Ubuntu-Afya Medical Centers are unique in their co-ownership model with target communities and in the incorporation of complementary financial service enterprises, which cross-subsidize the cost of health service.

MomConnect is a National Department of Health program in South Africa that has used mobile phones to deliver stage-based maternal and child health messages and to provide helpdesk services to over 1.8M women. It is complemented by NurseConnect, which provides psycho-social support, a helpdesk, and training to 20,000 nurses. Both are integrated into existing health data systems so that administrators can identify and respond to service delivery gaps.

Iron deficiency is a major contributor to maternal death, that can be addressed by improving the iron status of women through iron fortification. Unfortunately, iron forms foul-tasting, coloured and non-biodegradable complexes with polyphenols in tea. We have developed technology that adds bioavailable iron to tea. We have shown the process to be effective in-vitro, and in-vivo. The proposed project is the critical first step in a comprehensive plan for large scale implementation of this technology.

Our intervention integrates evidence-based approaches for maternal, newborn, and child health, focused on the "golden 1000 days" from conception through age two through two key components: 1) an integrated hospital-to-home healthcare model utilizing Community Health Workers (CHWs) for monitoring and increasing utilization of services, maternal and neonatal health knowledge, self-efficacy, social support, and emergency planning among mothers; and 2) Continuous surveillance of all pregnancies and children via an integrated electronic health record.

Access to basic health care remains elusive for the world’s poor, especially the rural poor in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). One key determinant is the weakness of health care systems to respond to the needs of the community in a timely, agile, and responsive manner. In Malawi, health systems infrastructure limits access in both directions. Those who support and manage health systems lack accurate and timely information about health care needs at the last mile.

Learning Clubs is an integrated, evidence-based caregiver education program that addresses multiple major risk factors, including: maternal nutrition, infant health and development, gender-based violence and empowerment and maternal mental health to optimal early childhood development. Each of the program’s 19 community-based facilitated group sessions provide mothers, fathers, and grandparents with access to learning activities, group interaction, educational DVDs, and social support throughout the first 1000 days of a child’s development.

In Cameroon, poor rural woman suffers inequitably from preventable, ill-health and death due to maternal related causes, with maternal mortality at 596/100,000 lives birth(1). These rural women, especially those with no formal education, make up the majority of the deaths. Most of the interventions currently being delivered do not address their needs(2). This results in a low demand by these women for, antenatal care, skilled birth deliveries, and family planning(3-5).