The Ghana essential health interventions program: a plausibility trial of the impact of health systems strengthening on maternal & child survival

作者：John Koku Awoonor‐Williams, Ayaga Agula Bawah, Frank K. Nyonator, Rofina Asuru, Abraham Rexford Oduro, Anthony Adofo Ofosu, James F. Phillips · 发表于：BMC Health Services Research · 年份：2013 · DOI：10.1186/1472-6963-13-s2-s3 · 被引用次数：140 · 研究领域：Global Maternal and Child Health、Child Nutrition and Water Access、Community Health and Development

BACKGROUND: During the 1990s, researchers at the Navrongo Health Research Centre in northern Ghana developed a highly successful community health program. The keystone of the Navrongo approach was the deployment of nurses termed community health officers to village locations. A trial showed that, compared to areas relying on existing services alone, the approach reduced child mortality by half, maternal mortality by 40%, and fertility by nearly a birth - from a total fertility rate of 5.5 in only five years. In 2000, the government of Ghana launched a national program called Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) to scale up the Navrongo model. However, CHPS scale-up has been slow in districts located outside of the Upper East Region, where the "Navrongo Experiment" was first carried out. This paper describes the Ghana Essential Health Intervention Project (GEHIP), a plausibility trial of strategies for strengthening CHPS, especially in the areas of maternal and newborn health, and generating the political will to scale up the program with strategies that are faithful to the original design. DESCRIPTION OF THE INTERVENTION: GEHIP improves the CHPS model by 1) extending the range and quality of services for newborns; 2) training community volunteers to conduct the World Health Organization service regimen known as integrated management of childhood illness (IMCI); 3) simplifying the collection of health management information and ensuring its use for decision maki...