Kiracho, E.E., Namuhani, N., Apolot, R.R. et al. (2020) Influence of community scorecards on maternal and newborn health service delivery and utilization, Int J Equity Health 19, 145, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-020-01184-6
The community score card (CSC) is a participatory monitoring and evaluation tool that has been employed to strengthen the mutual accountability of health system and community actors. In this paper we describe the influence of the CSC on selected maternal and newborn service delivery and utilization indicators.
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Kananura RM, Ekirapa-Kiracho E, Paina L, Bumba A, Mulekwa G, Nakiganda-Busiku D, Oo HNL, Kiwanuka SN, George A and Peters DH (2017) Participatory monitoring and evaluation approaches that influence decision-making: lessons from a maternal and newborn study in Eastern Uganda, Health Research Policy and Systems, 15(Suppl 2):107, DOI: 10.1186/s12961-017-0274-9
The use of participatory monitoring and evaluation (M&E) approaches is important for guiding local decision-making, promoting the implementation of effective interventions and addressing emerging issues in the course of implementation. In this article, we explore how participatory M&E approaches helped to identify key design and implementation issues and how they influenced stakeholders’ decision-making in eastern Uganda.
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Paina L, Wilkinson A, Tetui M, Ekirapa-Kiracho E, Barman D, Ahmed T, Mahmood SS, Bloom G, Knezovich J, George A and Bennett S (2017) Using Theories of Change to inform implementation of health systems research and innovation: experiences of Future Health Systems consortium partners in Bangladesh, India and Uganda, Health Research Policy and Systems, 15(Suppl 2):109, DOI: 10.1186/s12961-017-0272-y
The Theory of Change (ToC) is a management and evaluation tool supporting critical thinking in the design, implementation and evaluation of development programmes. We document the experience of Future Health Systems (FHS) Consortium research teams in Bangladesh, India and Uganda with using ToC. We seek to understand how and why ToCs were applied and to clarify how they facilitate the implementation of iterative intervention designs and stakeholder engagement in health systems research and strengthening.
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Ekirapa-Kiracho E, Ghaosh U, Brahmachari R and Paina L (2017) Engaging stakeholders: lessons from the use of participatory tools for improving maternal and child care health services, Health Research Policy and Systems, 15(Suppl 2):106, DOI: 10.1186/s12961-017-0271-z
Effective stakeholder engagement in research and implementation is important for improving the development and implementation of policies and programmes. A varied number of tools have been employed for stakeholder engagement. In this paper, we discuss two participatory methods for engaging with stakeholders – participatory social network analysis (PSNA) and participatory impact pathways analysis (PIPA). Based on our experience, we derive lessons about when and how to apply these tools.
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Glandon D, Paina L, Alonge O, Peters DH and Bennett S (2017) 10 Best resources for community engagement in implementation research, Health Policy and Planning, Volume 32, Issue 10, 1457–1465, doi: 10.1093/heapol/czx123
Implementation research (IR) focuses on understanding how and why interventions produce their effects in a given context. This often requires engaging a broad array of stakeholders at multiple levels of the health system. Whereas a variety of tools and approaches exist to facilitate stakeholder engagement at the national or institutional level, there is a substantial gap in the IR literature about how best to do this at the local or community level. Similarly, although there is extensive guidance on community engagement within the context of clinical trials—for HIV/AIDS in particular—the same cannot be said for IR. We identified a total of 59 resources by using a combination of online searches of the peer-reviewed and grey literature, as well as crowd-sourcing through the Health Systems Global platform. The authors then completed two rounds of rating the resources to identify the ‘10 best’.
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Ekirapa-Kiracho E, Paina L, Kananura RM, Mutebi A, Jane P, Tumuhairwe J, Tetui M and Kiwanuka SN (2017) ‘Nurture the sprouting bud; do not uproot it’. Using saving groups to save for maternal and newborn health: lessons from rural Eastern Uganda, Global Health Action, 10:sup4, 1347311, DOI: 10.1080/16549716.2017.1347311
Saving groups are increasingly being used to save in many developing countries. However, there is limited literature about how they can be exploited to improve maternal and newborn health. This paper describes saving practices, factors that encourage and constrain saving with saving groups, and lessons learnt while supporting communities to save through saving groups.
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Mutebi A, Kananura RM, Ekirapa-Kiracho E, Bua J, Kiwanuka SN, Nammazi G, Paina L and Tetui M (2017) Characteristics of community savings groups in rural Eastern Uganda: opportunities for improving access to maternal health services, Global Health Action, 10:sup4, 1347363, DOI: 10.1080/16549716.2017.1347363
Rural populations in Uganda have limited access to formal financial Institutions, but a growing majority belong to saving groups. These saving groups could have the potential to improve household income and access to health services. This article aimed to understand organizational characteristics, benefits and challenges, of savings groups in rural Uganda.
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Ekirapa-Kiracho E, Kananura RM, Tetui M, Namazzi G, Mutebi A, George A, Paina L, Waiswa P, Bumba A, Mulekwa G, Nakiganda-Busiku D, Lyagoba M, Naiga H, Putan M, Kulwenza A, Ajeani J, Kakaire-Kirunda A, Makumbi F, Atuyambe L, Okui O and Kiwanuka SN (2017) Effect of a participatory multisectoral maternal and newborn intervention on maternal health service utilization and newborn care practices: a quasi-experimental study in three rural Ugandan districts, Global Health Action, 10:sup4, 1363506, DOI: 10.1080/16549716.2017.1363506
The MANIFEST study in eastern Uganda employed a participatory multisectoral approach to reduce barriers to access to maternal and newborn care services. This study analyses the effect of the intervention on the utilization of maternal and newborn services and care practices.
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Ekirapa-Kiracho E, Tetui M, Bua J, Kananura RM, Waiswa P, Makumbi F, Atuyambe L, Ajeani J, George A, Mutebi A, Kakaire A, Namazzi G, Paina L and Kiwanuka SN (2017) Maternal and neonatal implementation for equitable systems: A study design paper, Global Health Action, 10:sup4, 1359924, DOI: 10.1080/16549716.2017.1346925
Evidence on effective ways of improving maternal and neonatal health outcomes is widely available. The challenge that most low-income countries grapple with is implementation at scale and sustainability. The study aimed at improving access to quality maternal and neonatal health services in a sustainable manner by using a participatory action research approach.
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Ozawa S, Paina L and Qiu M (2016) Exploring pathways for building trust in vaccination and strengthening health system resilience, BMC Health Services Research, 16:1867, DOI: 10.1186/s12913-016-1867-7
Trust is critical to generate and maintain demand for vaccines in low and middle income countries. However, there is little documentation on how health system insufficiencies affect trust in vaccination and the process of re-building trust once it has been compromised. We reflect on how disruptions to immunizations systems can affect trust in vaccination and can compromise vaccine utilization. We then explore key pathways for overcoming system vulnerabilities in order to restore trust, to strengthen the resilience of health systems and communities, and to promote vaccine utilization.
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Paina L, Vadrevu L, Hanifi SMMA, Akuze J, Rieder R, Chan KS and Peters DH (2016) What is the role of community capabilities for maternal health? An exploration of community capabilities as determinants to institutional deliveries in Bangladesh, India, and Uganda, BMC Health Services Research, 16:1861, DOI: 10.1186/s12913-016-1861-0
While community capabilities are recognized as important factors in developing resilient health systems and communities, appropriate metrics for these have not yet been developed. Furthermore, the role of community capabilities on access to maternal health services has been underexplored. In this paper, we summarize the development of a community capability score based on the Future Health System (FHS) project’s experience in Bangladesh, India, and Uganda, and, examine the role of community capabilities as determinants of institutional delivery in these three contexts.
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Systems thinking represents a unique theoretical and practical contribution. It facilitates ways to cross disciplines, and brings previously unused tools and approaches to tackle global health implementation differently. Future Health Systems (FHS) has played a major role in applying and advocating for the approach as a means to holistically understand health systems in low- and middle-income countries, as well as adaptation and scale-up of the project’s interventions.
Throughout the duration of the Future Health Systems project (FHS), country teams have committed to undertaking systematic learning though implementation research and by bringing together key actors involved in service delivery. In this Key Message Brief, we share some examples of how FHS teams have embodied a “learning-by-doing” approach, and what the consequences of this approach have been.
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In spite of the investments made by the Ugandan Government, the utilisation of maternal health services has remained low, resulting in a high maternal mortality (438 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births). Aiming to reduce poor women’s constraints to the utilisation of services, an intervention consisting of a voucher scheme and health system strengthening was implemented. This paper presents the lessons learnt during the setup and implementation of the intervention in Eastern Uganda, in order to inform the design and scale up of similar future interventions.
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This paper presents a system dynamics computer simulation model to illustrate unintended consequences of apparently rational allocations to curative and preventive services.
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This presentation is from a workshop in Baltimore in June 2014 on complex adaptive systems (CAS) research methods held at Johns Hopkins University. In this presentation, Ligia Paina from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows how to use the computer program Vensim to develop Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs).
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Sector-wide approaches (SWAps) in health were developed in the early 1990s in response to widespread dissatisfaction with fragmented donor-sponsored projects and prescriptive adjustment lending. SWAps were intended to provide a more coherent way to articulate and manage government-led sectoral policies and expenditure frameworks and build local institutional capacity as well as offer a means to more effective relationships between governments and donor agencies. The global health landscape has changed dramatically since then. Although many countries have undertaken SWAps, the experience deviated considerably from the early vision, and many of the problems in national health systems persist. The future of SWAps will depend on stronger government oversight and innovative institutional arrangements to support health strategies that address the need for both targeted initiatives and stronger health systems to provide a wide range of public health and clinical services. For development assistance to be more effective, it will also depend on better discipline by donors to support national governments through transparent negotiation.
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Although health interventions start with good intentions to develop services for disadvantaged populations, they often distort the health market, making the delivery or financing of services difficult once the intervention is over: a condition called the ‘Develop-Distort Dilemma’ (DDD). In this paper, we describe how to examine whether a proposed intervention may develop or distort the health market. Our goal is to produce a tool that facilitates meaningful and systematic dialogue for practitioners and researchers to ensure that well-intentioned health interventions lead to productive health systems while reducing the undesirable distortions of such efforts.
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Despite increased prominence and funding of global health initiatives, efforts to scale up health services in developing countries are falling short of the expectations of the Millennium Development Goals. Arguing that the dominant assumptions for scaling up are inadequate, we propose that interpreting change in health systems through the lens of complex adaptive systems (CAS) provides better models of pathways for scaling up.
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This presentation by Ligia Paina & David Peters was given as part of a Future Health System Consortium session at the Global Symposium on Health Systems Research. It is part of our Beyond Scaling Up stream of work.
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