Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

In addition to supporting maternal and child survival, visualizing the foetus during ultrasound (US) evokes strong emotions and in high-income countries (HICs) results in positive parental attitudes and attachment to baby, and increased health facility attendance. In 2016 WHO issued global antenatal care guidelines, recommending 8 antenatal visits and 1 ultrasound less than 24w.

In Zimbabwe, thousands of babies are born every year to HIV infected adolescent mothers. These infants suffer significant risks that lead to poor brain development, delayed physical growth and cognitive delays. The Breaking the Chain Project proposes an innovative approach to decrease these risks and improve long term outcomes. The project utilizes Mentor Mothers (MMs) who are HIV positive, aged 18-24 and trained as peer counselors. MMs provide care and support to HIV positive adolescent mothers and their children up to age two.

The Project will contextualize and evaluate an intervention for community-based child development and maternal depression care in refugee camps. Bangladesh has received around 750,000 refugees from Myanmar. In such difficult circumstance (1, 2), this is important to enable refugee mothers to take better care of their own health and development of young children; but a contextualized intervention to deliver such care in refugee camps is found lacking.

Parenting programs that promote positive parenting aspects and disciplines & reduce parenting stress are needed worldwide, particularly in marginalized communities. The proposed project is designed to evaluate child development, parenting stress levels, parenting behavior and discipline strategies used by refugees from Syria and marginalized host communities in bringing up their children in Lebanon and Jordan, before and after the implementation of the intervention.

In Brazil, a significant part of the child population lives in adverse conditions and is exposed to stressful situations that can increase the risk of developing health problems, which can be further worsened in environments such as a prison. The Better Early Childhood Development Program (PIM) is a public effort that has been implanted in the state of Rio Grande do Sul and aims to promote comprehensive early childhood development for all.

Maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) is a priority area of Jamaica’s Ministry of Health and with neonatal deaths and stillbirths being reported in the news, there is public interest in ensuring demonstrable action is taken. This context justifies implementing our innovation in Jamaica, an idea developed jointly by our team, a partnership between the Jamaica Ministry of Health, the Women’s Health Network Jamaica and the Dalhousie University WHO/PAHO Collaborating Centre on Health Workforce Planning & Research.

This project proposes to empower parents and care givers in rural communities, by providing information about ante natal and pre-natal practices as well as parenting for holistic development of children in the first 1000 days of life through animated videos. The videos will be based on a guide book on Learning Through Play (LTP) developed by Bala Mandir Research Foundation (BMRF) and the Network for Information on Parenting with support from UNICEF.

Guatemala has the second highest prevalence of stunting in the world among children under 5 years of age and the highest in Latin America (49%). By any measure (income, education, health, stunting), rural, indigenous Maya people (who make up over half of the population) have the highest rates of deprivation. The central innovation proposed is the implementation of a new community counseling model for maternal and child health, with supportive supervision and the use of performance incentives, led by youth from Guatemalan rural, indigenous communities.

Decades of nutrition and more recent child development trials have produced effective interventions which improve physical growth and development. Despite the strong evidence base, strikingly little is known on the effectiveness of combining interventions into packages and best implementation models, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. In order to address this challenging gap to roll-out of comprehensive improve child growth and development programs, the objectives of the project are to: 1.

Deficiency of micro-nutrients in infancy can lead to failure of full growth potential. Deficiency of iron and vitamin D is prevalent in India and supplements have been recommended. While oral fortification or supplementation of micro-nutrients is limited by issues of taste, stability, poor absorption and gastrointestinal disturbances, our innovation allows easy delivery of micro-nutrients through skin. We have developed safe nano-particles that encapsulate micro-nutrients and interact with the outermost layer of skin to enhance penetration and can be delivered through an oil platform.