Armed conflict disproportionately affects women, newborns, children, and adolescents. Our study presents insights from a collection of ten country case studies aiming to assess the provision of sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition (abbreviated to women's and childern's health, i.e WCH in this paper) interventions in conflict-affected settings in Afghanistan,

Introduction: Since decades, the health system of Afghanistan has been in disarray due to ongoing conflict. We aimed to explore the direct effects of conflict on provision of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition (RMNCAH&N) services and describe the contextual factors influencing these services. Method: We conducted a quantitative analysis of secondary data on RMNCAH&N indicators and undertook a supportive qualitative study to help understand processes and contextual factors. For quantitative analysis, we stratified the various provinces of Afghanistan into minimal-, moderate-and severe conflict categories based on battle-related deaths from Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and through accessibility of health services using a Delphi methodology. The coverage of RMNCAH&N indicators across the continuum of care were extracted from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS). The qualitative data was captured by conducting key informant interviews of multi-sectoral stakeholders working in government, NGOs and UN agencies. Results: Comparison of various provinces based on the severity of conflict through Delphi process showed that the mean coverage of various RMNCAH&N indicators including antenatal care (OR: 0.

Jai Das and colleagues present an innovative and evolutionary model of multistakeholder and multisectoral collaboration in scaling up coverage of health services in Afghanistan

A long term strategy is vital to build on the impact of community health workers in achieving universal health coverage, say Zulfiqar Bhutta and colleagues

Background The BRANCH Consortium recently conducted 10 mixed-methods case studies to investigate the provision of health and nutrition interventions for women and children in conflict-affected countries, aiming to better understand the dominant influences on humanitarian health actors’ programmatic decision-making and how such actors surmount intervention delivery barriers. In this paper, the research challenges encountered and the mitigating strategies employed by the case study investigators in four of the BRANCH case study contexts are discussed: Somalia, Mali, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Discussion Many of the encountered research challenges were anticipated, with investigators adopting mitigation strategies in advance or early on, but others were unexpected, with implications for how studies were ultimately conducted and how well the original study aims were met. Insecurity was a fundamental challenge in all study contexts, with restricted geographical access and concerns for personal safety affecting sampling and data collection plans, and requiring reliance on digital communications, remote study management, and off-site team meetings wherever possible. The need to navigate complex local sociopolitical contexts required maximum reliance on local partners’ knowledge, expertise and networks, and this was facilitated by early engagement with a wide range of local study stakeholders. Severe lack of reliable quantitative data on intervention coverage affected the extent to which information from different sources could be triangulated or integrated to inform an understanding of the influences on humanitarian actors’ decision-making. Conclusion Strong local partners are essential to the success of any project, contributing not only technical and methodological capacity but also the insight needed to truly understand and interpret local dynamics for the wider study team and to navigate those dynamics to ensure study rigour and relevance. Maintaining realistic expectations of data that are typically available in conflict settings is also essential, while pushing for more resources and further methodological innovation to improve data collection in such settings. Finally, successful health research in the complex, dynamic and unpredictable contexts of conflict settings requires flexibility and adaptability of researchers, as well as sponsors and donors.