Maternal and Newborn Health

Tag Archive for: Maternal and Newborn Health

National Framework for mHealth: Ethiopia

Ethiopia is at a pivotal moment in its efforts to improve the health status of its people and move the country into a new phase of social and economic development. The country’s massive Health Extension Program (HEP) program has placed over 34,000 community health workers in 14,000 health posts in less than 8 years. Now, health authorities are exploring ways to improve the program with mobile solutions.

Sponsored by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Vital Wave Consulting authored the “mHealth in Ethiopia: Strategies for a new Framework” report for the Ethiopian Ministry of Health. The report offers a framework for addressing specific information, communication and inventory management issues with mHealth interventions.

Download the report by clicking the link below – and let us know what you think in the comments!

Initiative:

Evidence Commons

Maternal Newborn mHealth

April 10, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Family Planning, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Women in Development

50 Ideas and Solutions that Deliver for Girls and Women

As you may have heard Women Deliver is celebrating the progress made on behalf of girls and women worldwide. Building on its 2011 competition, which featured inspiring people who have delivered for girls and women, this year they have chosen to spotlight top ideas and solutions in the following five categories:

•   Technologies and Innovations
•   Educational Initiatives
•   Health Modernization
•   Advocacy and Awareness Campaigns
•   Leadership and Empowerment Programs

Out of hundreds of submissions, a selection committee has chosen 25 per category. The top 125 have been posted here, where viewers can choose and vote on ten favorites per category. Several of the chosen innovations and solutions incorporate the use of mobile technologies for health, showing the increasing inclusion of this type of innovation for the advancement of women’s health. Finalists include the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania (CCBRT) by M-PESA, and many, many others.

In addition, the mHealth Alliance’s Catalytic Grant Mechanism for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) and mHealth has been chosen as one of the top 25 ideas and solutions in the health intervention category. The Innovation Working Group, part of the Every Woman Every Child initiative, Norad, and the mHealth Alliance have partnered in the creation of a competitive and catalytic grant mechanism with a special focus on growing programs with sustainable financing models and early indications of impact. The projects supported through this grant mechanism harness the reach and popularity of mobile phones to help women, their families, and their health care providers in low-income settings combat inequitable access to quality health services. Funding is awarded through annual competitions managed by the mHealth Alliance and allows winners to take mHealth pilot programs to scale. You can find out information on this year’s grantees here.

Please show your support for mobile innovations and vote. The top 50 winners will be announced on March 8th, International Women’s Day. Vote now!

Initiative:

Maternal Newborn mHealth

February 27, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

mHealth Alliance to provide technical support for 8 innovative mHealth projects in 2012

Map with location of mHealth projects pinned

Last month at the third annual mHealth Summit held in Washington, D.C., the Innovation Working Group, part of the UN Secretary-General’s Every Woman Every Child effort, and the mHealth Alliance announced the recipients of eight catalytic grants for mHealth programs. The grants, funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), are designed to identify and foster innovative uses of mobile technology to advance maternal and newborn health, with a particular focus on supporting programs with sustainable financing models and early indications of health impact.

The eight mHealth projects receiving grants span from Africa to Southern Asia. They address such diverse issues as malnutrition on the small Tanzanian island of Zanzibar to childhood immunization drop-outs in Karachi, Pakistan. Each project has already demonstrated initial pilot level efficacy, and the grants will be used to take the programs to regional or national scale and make progress towards Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. A link to each of the 2011 Competition Winners’ websites can be found below.

The mHealth Alliance will work to provide the necessary resources and skills to support national scale-up processes and enable expanded reach to communities in need. Throughout the two-year grant period, the mHealth Alliance will provide technical support and establish opportunities for collaborative learning among the grantees, as well as facilitate the formation of public-private partnerships to further support long term impact and sustainability. “Each of the eight recipient initiatives has demonstrated innovative mobile technology solutions to obstacles in health and healthcare practices,” said Patty Mechael, Executive Director of the mHealth Alliance. “From providing maternal and newborn health information via mobile phones to building technology that supports clinical decision-making, these initiatives all focus [on] helping the world’s most vulnerable populations lead a healthier life.”

The next round of catalytic funding will be announced early this year. mHealth projects that have already demonstrated efficacy at pilot level and that have a viable plan for sustainability and scale are encouraged to submit applications. Check back with the HUB for application instructions and for monthly blog posts from the eight catalytic mHealth projects as they share their experiences going to scale.

2011 Competition Winners include:

Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI)

Dimagi, Inc

D-tree International

Grameen Foundation

Interactive Research and Development (IRD)-Pakistan

Novartis Foundation

Rwanda Ministry of Health

Cell-Life

Initiative:

Maternal Newborn mHealth

January 31, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

2011 mHealth Summit Q&A

The mHealth Alliance is building on the monumental success of last year’s mHealth Summit, which saw more than 2,600 attendees from nearly 50 countries. This year, the mHealth Alliance joins HIMSS and NIH as organizing partners for the FNIH-presented mHealth Summit. The Summitwill bring together leaders in government, the private sector, industry, academia, providers, and not-for-profit organizations from across the mHealth ecosystem and around the world. It will take place December 5^th-7^th at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center located just outside Washington, DC at the National Harbor.

As everyone gears up for the 2011 mHealth Summit, I have received a lot of questions. Some have been logistical, while others have been about the content of the Summit. I thought it might be helpful for those thinking about attending or planning to attend if I post questions as I get them along with answers. Here are a few I have gotten so far:

Q: What is the best airport to fly into and how do I get from the airport to the Gaylord?

A: There are three major airports that serve the Washington, DC metropolitan area, including Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), Baltimore/Washington International Airport (BWI), and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA). Super Shuttles can be taken from all of these locations, and the Gaylord offers hourly shuttle service from Reagan National Airport (DCA). Please visit Shuttle & Metro page of the mHealth Summit site for more information.

Q: Unfortunately, I missed the early registration period. Is there a discount code available?

A: Yes! The mHealth Alliance has a discount codefor the mHealth Summit. If you enter the code mHA11 during the registration process, you will receive $50 off a Full Access Pass. The Full Access Pass will get you into all of the Super Sessions, the Concurrent Sessions, the Exhibit Floor, the Monday Evening Reception, and the Keynote Luncheon on Tuesday. For more information about the different levels of passes available, please visit the registration page.

Q: How much of a focus will there be on maternal health projects?

A: The Maternal-newborn mHealth Initiative (MMI) is an important initiative of the mHealth Alliance. By focusing on maternal-newborn health as a lens to the application of ICTs to health systems, the mHealth Alliance is working toward health systems transformation to improve health outcomes for all populations. As such, maternal health is a very important topic for us, and it can be found throughout the summit program. A few panels and events that may have maternal content include, but are not limited to: mHealth Business Models in Maternal Health, The Intersection of Mobile Health and Public Health – Towards Greater Understanding and Collaboration, Deployment Case Studies for the mHealth Field Worker, and several sessions of the mFinance track. There will also be a Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA): An Exchange with Partners side event, which will feature active discussions with its in-country and global partners. Visit the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) site to learn more about their activities around the world.

Q: How much of a focus will there be on mHealth in the developing world?

A: Making sure that the experiences of people in the developing world are represented at the mHealth Summit is a priority of the mHealth Alliance. Panels and events that focus on this include, but are not limited to: Global Policy and Regulatory Perspectives of mHealth, Global Regulatory Frameworks: Understanding Regulatory Concerns Across Different Markets, Government Role in Scaling mHealth: Collaborations to Launch National mHealth Strategies, Successful mHealth Business Models in Emerging Markets, A New Model for National-level mHealth Planning, and the above mentioned MAMA event. The mHealth Alliance will also host a side event featuring mHealth national stakeholders from around the globe. At the National Stakeholders: Learning from the Global South event, panelists will share the successes and challenges they have faced in bringing a diverse group of stakeholders together to tackle issues like policy and regulation, interoperability, data security, and intersections with other mServices.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to comment below, and I will try to answer you as soon as possible.

Thank you so much for your interest in the mHealth Summit. If you would like to register, please click here. We hope to see you there!

October 25, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Marketing “Mobile Midwife” in Ghana

Can information delivered on a mobile phone affect the outcome of a pregnancy in a developing country? Can communities and healthcare workers use mobile phones to save the lives of newborns? These are some of the questions that the Mobile Technology for Community Health (MOTECH) program in Ghana is trying to address. Grameen Foundation is working with Ghana Health Service and Columbia University in one of the poorest rural districts of Ghana to try to improve the health outcomes for mothers and their newborns using mobile phones. But once a service has been created, how do you generate awareness for it and ensure there is adequate participation?

In July 2010, we launched a service called “Mobile Midwife,” which enablespregnant women and their families to receive SMS or pre-recorded voice messages on personal mobile phones. The messages are tied to the estimated due-date for the woman so the information is time-specific and delivered weekly in their own language. Nurses also use mobile phones to record when a pregnant woman has received prenatal care. If critical care is missed, both the mother and the nurse receive a reminder message on their mobile phones. To date, over 7,000 pregnant women and children under five have been registered in the system. More detail about the program can be found online in our “Lessons Learned in Ghana” report.

One of the challenges we faced in the development of this system was how to generate awareness for the “Mobile Midwife” service in the first place. Unless people register for the service, they cannot receive the important information we are able to provide about pregnancy. As we talked to people in the rural villages where “Mobile Midwife” would be available, it quickly became clear that communities in Ghana, and particularly the Upper East Region, had been inundated with cartoon-like health message campaigns from myriad NGOs and government agencies. People told us that if campaigns were seen as “too slick,” people would not think the messages were relevant to them. The MOTECH team decided to pursue an approach that sought to provide “aspirational” images that were differentiated from the typical “NGO cartoon” campaign, but still were relevant to the UER population. This included using real photographs instead of drawings, and ensuring that the people in the photographs were wearing clothes in the style of those worn in the rural areas where we worked. Part of the aspirational message was dressing the models in new, clean clothing, which proved to be effective. When field testing the marketing styles, many people said they “liked the lady in the pictures and it made them feel good as one day they would like to be dressed well too.” The team also decided to create some messaging that was targeted specifically to men, in an effort to respect their roles as decision makers in the family, get them to listen to the messages with their partners, and be a part of making positive health choices throughout pregnancy, birth and early childhood. As the program evolves, we expect to experiment with broader reach marketing vehicles such as radio and community mobilization.

Initiative:

Maternal Newborn mHealth

Order:

October 5, 2011/by actualize

Tag Archive for: Maternal and Newborn Health

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