Istock / Oksana Kalmykova
A collection of studies carried out by maternal health researchers from the Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health highlights unique research methods to improve monitoring measures for determinants of maternal health in the world.
The collection, compiled by Plos, was published on February 3 and includes 13 articles describing research studies carried out in Argentina, Ghana and India as part of the Harvard Chan School maternal health measure. The project was led by the current and former subsidiaries of the Department of Global Health and Population: Rima Jolivet, former principal researcher; Jewel Gausman, SCD ’17, former main research partner; And Ana LangerProfessor of public health practice, Emerita.
“As maternal deaths do not largely pass to be attributable to direct obstetrics to indirect causes, the fight against upstream contextual factors (is) crucial to end the avoidable maternal mortality,” wrote Jolivet, Gausman and Langer in their introduction to the collection. “However, most health indicators in terms of health policy and system are not validated by research, and there is no standard research methodology to do so.”
Studies offer an overview of the measurement of measures that health care decision -makers in countries and global use regularly to follow, assess and stimulate improvements in systemic and structural determinants of maternal health. These determinants include access to safe and legal abortion, the availability and competence of midwife’s workforce, the availability of emergency obstetric care, the supply of family planning focused on the person and universal access to essential maternity care services.
Said Jolivet, “this collection of original validity research can help researchers improve the tools available to measure critical determinants upstream of health and maternal survival.”
Browse the collection in Plos: Improvement of maternal health measurement