Thanks for choosing an important topic (maternal health) which can greatly affect infant and whole family health and prosperity.
Historically, the interventions which lead to a very helpful 2 year gap between pregnancies are called “birth spacing” or just “spacing”. If others are interested in this, or stunting, or impacts on educational attainment/IQ, a lot is available.
USAID’s work on the BASICS programme and its successors is especially important, and produced a lot of effectiveness outputs and lessons learned, available now through me, in books, and via Scholar searches like this one on Ghana.
Some categories to bear in mind:
- for behaviour change in parental or sexual practices, single interventions of a limited duration are rarely effective; multiple tactics over an extended period work better; good examples include USAID BASICS approach to increasing breast-feeding and vaccination in Madagascar, using women’s drama groups, radio, artists, flags on clinics, positive deviants, income-generation etc all in the same district
- a properly participatory approach (PLA) and (ideally) community-led approach is more likely to work and sustain itself; this takes more initial negotiation, and experienced community workers, but it pays off handsomely.
- this is an area where expertise and field experience in specific IRL context do matter: there are so many things to get wrong, and people have been working on effectiveness, health economics and RTCs for decades. This does not mean EAs have no role, but talking to larger NGOs/sector funders and asking them to identify gaps can be a good strategy. If an NGO repeatedly gets USAID, GIZ and French funding and has been around in a country for 20 years, they have probably achieved some good impacts and know some unmet needs and opportunities. NGOs are often friendly about networking and referals. (Try the Hash House Harriers or English-speaking church or embassy events, ot stop by at the Netherlands Embassy, often helpful and pragmatic)
I’m happy to be called about this, and any global health/poverty issues.
Thanks for choosing an important topic (maternal health) which can greatly affect infant and whole family health and prosperity.
Historically, the interventions which lead to a very helpful 2 year gap between pregnancies are called “birth spacing” or just “spacing”. If others are interested in this, or stunting, or impacts on educational attainment/IQ, a lot is available.
USAID’s work on the BASICS programme and its successors is especially important, and produced a lot of effectiveness outputs and lessons learned, available now through me, in books, and via Scholar searches like this one on Ghana.
Some categories to bear in mind:
- for behaviour change in parental or sexual practices, single interventions of a limited duration are rarely effective; multiple tactics over an extended period work better; good examples include USAID BASICS approach to increasing breast-feeding and vaccination in Madagascar, using women’s drama groups, radio, artists, flags on clinics, positive deviants, income-generation etc all in the same district
- a properly participatory approach (PLA) and (ideally) community-led approach is more likely to work and sustain itself; this takes more initial negotiation, and experienced community workers, but it pays off handsomely.
- this is an area where expertise and field experience in specific IRL context do matter: there are so many things to get wrong, and people have been working on effectiveness, health economics and RTCs for decades. This does not mean EAs have no role, but talking to larger NGOs/sector funders and asking them to identify gaps can be a good strategy. If an NGO repeatedly gets USAID, GIZ and French funding and has been around in a country for 20 years, they have probably achieved some good impacts and know some unmet needs and opportunities. NGOs are often friendly about networking and referals. (Try the Hash House Harriers or English-speaking church or embassy events, ot stop by at the Netherlands Embassy, often helpful and pragmatic)
I’m happy to be called about this, and any global health/poverty issues.