News Release

How best can we scale-up interventions to prevent stillbirths?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

While some community-based interventions to prevent the 3.2 million annual deaths due to stillbirth have proved effective in controlled settings and specific contexts, there is an enormous challenge in bringing these interventions to scale. A new analysis in this week's PLoS Medicine addresses this "implementation research challenge" by identifying key priorities for research and action. Asha George from UNICEF, New York, USA and a group of international colleagues used the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) methodology to score and rank implementation research questions about community-based maternal–newborn interventions that address prematurity and stillbirths in different contexts at scale. The top five research questions they identify address equity (e.g., reaching the poor and marginalized, reducing financial barriers), behavioral practices and skills (e.g., engaging with social norms, identifying prematurity), and quality of care provided by community health workers. The top 15 questions encompass issues pertaining to behavioral interventions, community health workers, referral, and managing health systems.

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Funding: IR and CGV received support as consultants from the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) and the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirths (GAPPS). GAPPS, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, March of Dimes, PATH, Save the Children, UNICEF, and WHO, also funded the meeting in which the research prioritization process was initiated. There were no other sources of funding and all authors (except IR and CGV) volunteered their time to conduct this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: While this paper was being developed IR was a consultant for the Child Health and Nutrition Initiative (CHNRI) of the Global Forum for Health Research. Because the authors all work in this research area, it is conceivable that they could benefit from any increased attention and financing regarding implementation research in preventing prematurity and stillbirth.

Citation: George A, Young M, Bang A, Chan KY, Rudan I, et al. (2011) Setting Implementation Research Priorities to Reduce Preterm Births and Stillbirths at the Community Level. PLoS Med 8(1): e1000380. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000380

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000380

PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: www.plos.org/press/plme-08-01-george.pdf

CONTACT:

Asha George

UNICEF
Policy & Evidence Unit
3 UN Plaza
New York, NY 10017
United States of America
+12128246369
+12128246460 (fax)
ageorge@unicef.org


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