Strengthening the home-to-facility continuum of newborn and child health care through mHealth: Evidence from an intervention in rural Malawi

Abstract

Abstract

Improving health equity for ethnic minority women in Thai Nguyen, Vietnam: qualitative results from an mHealth intervention targeting maternal and infant health service access

“…Few studies have examined the impact of mHealth on participants’ confidence, satisfaction with health care or relationships with health workers, but available literature has found text message interventions to support higher satisfaction with antenatal care, higher confidence and lower anxiety during pregnancy, 33 increased empowerment to make informed decisions about health care, and increased knowledge in interactions with health workers. 34 The mMom project found that providing actionable and motivational information promoted participants’ active participation in care-seeking, which influenced the frequency and quality of their health system interactions.…”

Assessment of interventions in Primary Health Care for improved maternal, new-born and child health in sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review

“…The mhealth strategy is imperative given the increasing use of mobile telecommunication in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The mhealth in Malawi reduced the burden of care-seeking in health facilities for childhood illnesses particularly fever [32]. This indicates that mhealth strategy would reduce facility-level workload of PHC workers.…”

“…Studies from Eastern Africa were the highest (n = 12): Tanzania [17][18][19][20][21][22], Rwanda [23,24], Ethiopia [25,26], Kenya [27] and Uganda [28]. There were five studies from Southern Africa: South Africa [29][30][31], Malawi [32], and Zimbabwe [33]. Studies conducted in Western Africa were 9: Nigeria [24,[34][35][36][37][38], Burkina Faso [39], Senegal [40], and Ghana [41].…”

“…Mobile health was shown to facilitate emergency medical responses, point-of-care support, improvement in access and adoption of maternal, prenatal and neonatal service.. An assessment of the impact of using mHealth (Chipatala cha pa Foni) in Malawi [32] showed a large, positive effect of the project on the aggregate home-based care for child health (p<0.01), and a sharp, negative impact on facility-based care seeking for fever among children whose mothers/caretakers used the services offered by the intervention. A cluster randomized controlled trial conducted in primary health care facilities in Zanzibar, Tanzania demonstrated that an intervention using mobile phones with a voucher component for the wired women resulted in a 50% significant reduction in perinatal mortality (odds ratio 0.50, 95% CI 0.27-0.93) in the intervention clusters.…”

Demographic Characteristics and the Attraction to Facilities in Shopping Malls: A Case of Ibadan, Nigeria

“…Anderson (1973) has long associated demography with facilities even though it was a study on the health sector where it was established that demographic characteristics, organisation of health services, ecological factors and social psychological factors influence the utilization of health services. In fact subsequent research on demographic characteristics and facilities in the health sector were even confined to the new-borns (Fotso, Bellhouse, Vesel, and Jezman, 2015).…”