A landscaping review of interventions to promote respectful maternal care in Africa: Opportunities to advance innovation and accountability.

OBJECTIVE: In the past decade, global recognition of the need to address disrespect and abuse (also described as mistreatment of women) and promote respectful maternal care in facility-based childbirth has increased. While many studies have documented gaps in respectful maternal care, little is known about the design and implementation of these interventions. Our aim was to summarize and describe respectful maternal care -promoting interventions during childbirth implemented in Africa. DESIGN: We identified respectful maternal care -promoting interventions in Africa through a rapid scoping of peer-reviewed articles and gray literature, and a crowdsourcing survey distributed through stakeholder networks. SETTING: Africa PARTICIPANTS: NA MEASUREMENTS AND FINDINGS: We identified 43 unique interventions implemented in 16 African countries, gathered from a crowdsourcing survey, gray and published literature between 2010 and 2020. Most interventions were implemented in East Africa (N = 13). The interventions had various targets and were categorized into nine approaches, 60% of interventions focused on training providers about respectful maternal care and practice. About two thirds included multiple intervention approaches, and about two thirds addressed respectful maternal care beyond the period of childbirth. Few publications presented data on the effectiveness of the intervention, and those that did used a wide variety of indicators. KEY CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: There is a reliance on provider training approaches to promote respectful maternal care and there are few examples of either engaging women in the community or adopting social accountability approaches. We encourage implementors to develop interventions targeting multiple approaches beyond provider training and consider delivery across pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal periods. Finally, in order to effectively move from documenting respectful maternal care gaps to action and scale, we need global consensus on common indicators and measures of effectiveness for interventions promoting respectful care across the life course.

Confronting the culture of care: a call to end disrespect, discrimination, and detainment of women and newborns in health facilities everywhere.

Quality and respect are increasingly recognized as critical aspects of the provision of health care, and poor quality may be an essential driver of low health care utilization, especially for maternal and neonatal care. Beyond differential access to care, unequal levels of quality exacerbate inequity, and those who need services most, including displaced, migrant, and conflict-affected populations, may be receiving poorer quality care, or may be deterred from seeking care at all.Examples from around the world show that mothers and their children are often judged and mistreated for presenting to facilities without clean or "modern" clothing, without soap or clean sheets to use in the hospital, or without gifts like sweets or candies for providers. Underfunded facilities may rely on income from those seeking care, but denying and shaming the poor further discriminates against vulnerable women and newborns, by placing additional financial burden on those already marginalized.The culture of care needs to shift to create welcoming environments for all care-seekers, regardless of socio-economic status. No one should fear mistreatment, denial of services, or detainment due to lack of gifts or payments. There is an urgent need to ensure that health care centers are safe, friendly, respectful, and hospitable spaces for women, their newborns, and their families.

A Rapid Review of Available Evidence to Inform Indicators for Routine Monitoring and Evaluation of Respectful Maternity Care.

BACKGROUND: Some opportunities to routinely capture and improve respectful maternity care (RMC) during facility-based childbirth include quality improvement (QI) initiatives, community-based monitoring efforts through community score cards (CSC), and performance-based financing (PBF) initiatives. But there is limited guidance on which types of RMC indicators are best suited for inclusion in these initiatives. We sought to provide practical evidence-based recommendations on indicators that may be used for routine measurement of RMC in programs. METHODS: We used a rapid review approach, which included (1) reviewing existing documents and publications to extract RMC indicators and identify which have or can be used in facility-based QI, CSCs, and PBF schemes; (2) surveying RMC and maternal health experts to rank indicators, and (3) analyzing survey data to select the most recommended indicators. RESULTS: We identified 49 indicators spanning several domains of RMC and mistreatment including dignified/nondignified care, verbal and physical abuse, privacy/confidentiality, autonomy/loss of autonomy, supportive care/lack thereof, communication, stigma, discrimination, trust, facility environment/culture, responsiveness, and nonevidence-based care. Based on the analysis of the survey data, we recommend 33 indicators (between 2 and 6 indicators for each RMC domain) that may be suited for incorporation in both facility-based QI and CSC-related monitoring efforts. CONCLUSION: Integrating RMC indicators into QI and CSC initiatives, as well as in other maternal and neonatal health programs, could help improve RMC at the facility and community level. More research is needed into whether RMC can be integrated into PBF initiatives. Integration of RMC indicators into programs to improve quality of care and other health system outcomes will facilitate routine monitoring and accountability around experience of care. Measurement and improvement of women's experiences will increase maternal health service utilization and improve quality of care as a means of reducing maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality.

Modeling the relationship between women's perceptions and future intention to use institutional maternity care in the Western Highlands of Guatemala.

BACKGROUND: Despite global gains, women in hard-to-reach areas are at a relatively higher risk of death and disability related to childbirth. Traditional methods of measuring satisfaction may mask negative experiences (such as disrespect and abuse) that can drive down demand for institutional care. Better measurement of women's perceptions of care quality, especially among marginalized populations with historically low utilization of institutional care, are needed to inform how to improve services and foster greater utilization of (potentially life-saving) clinical care. METHODS: A population-based household survey was conducted in 15 purposively selected villages in the rural Western Highlands of Guatemala among women who gave birth to a child within the last 5 years. Demographic and health information including experiences and perceptions of maternity care were collected. Two sets of nested multivariate logistic regression models were estimated to identify factors associated with future intention to give birth in a health facility, separately among women who gave birth to their last child at home and women who gave birth to their last child in a facility. The independent variables of interest were access to care, perceived need for maternity care, and two measures of perceived quality: satisfaction with last birth and disrespect and abuse (perceived or experienced). Thematic analysis was performed on open-ended responses. RESULTS: Perceived need for facility-based childbirth services and satisfaction with last childbirth experience, either at home or in a facility, emerged as the key factors influencing intention to give birth in a health institution in the future. Among the facility birth group, reporting disrespect and abuse is a deterrent to seeking facility-based care in the future. However, select perceptions of disrespect and abuse did not have an association with future intention (among the home birth group). CONCLUSIONS: Women's perceptions of care quality influence care-seeking. Women who feel they were mistreated in health facilities are more likely to avoid or delay seeking care in the future. Health systems need to reinforce trust and positive perceptions of respectful care. Developing better measures of women's perceptions of maternity care experiences among indigenous populations in Guatemala can inform improvements in care provision.

A call for collaboration on respectful, person-centered health care in family planning and maternal health.

BACKGROUND: Striking tales of people judged, disrespected, or abused in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health (RMNCAH) services are commonly exchanged among friends and families throughout the world while remaining sorely under-addressed in global health. Disrespect and abuse of individuals and providers in health services across the RMNCAH continuum must be stopped through collaborative, multi-tiered efforts. CALL FOR COLLABORATION: A new focus on health care quality in the Sustainable Development Goals offers an opportunity to seriously reexamine user experiences and their impact on health care utilization. The new framework provides an opening to redress the insidious problem of negative interactions with care across the RMNCAH services continuum and redraft the blueprint for service delivery and performance measurement, placing individuals and their needs at the center. Both the maternal health and family planning fields are at a turning point in their histories of defining and addressing individuals' experiences of care. In this commentary, we review these histories and the current state-of-the-art in both fields. Though the approaches and language in each sub-field vary, person-centered care principles related to the essential role of individuals' preferences, needs and values, and the importance of informed decision-making, respect, privacy and confidentiality, and non-discrimination, are integral to all. Promoting respectful, person-centered care also requires recognizing the factors that lead to poor treatment of clients, including gender norms and unsupportive working conditions for providers. Lessons can be learned from innovative efforts across the continuum to support health care providers to provide respectful, person-centered care. CONCLUSION: Efforts in the maternal health and family planning fields to define respectful, person-centered care provide a useful foundation from which to connect across the continuum of RMNCAH services. Now is the time to creatively work together to develop new approaches for promoting respectful treatment of individuals in all RMNCAH services.

An examination of postpartum family planning in western Kenya: "I want to use contraception but I have not been told how to do so".

Postpartum family planning (FP) in Kenya is low due to inadequate sensitization and awareness among women, particularly in rural areas. This paper identifies most widely used types of FP, intent and unmet needs among women, FP counseling and barriers to FP uptake. Focus group discussions with providers, traditional birth attendants (TBAs) and mothers, as well as in-depth interviews identify key themes including preferred postpartum FP, limits to existing FP counseling and barriers to FP uptake. Postpartum FP is common including injectable contraceptives, oral contraceptives, coils, condoms, and calendar methods. FP counseling is provided by peers, friends, TBAs and formal health providers. FP practices are associated with family support, literacy, access to FP information, side effects, costs and religion. In conclusion, changes in service provision and education could encourage increase in postpartum FP use in Kenya.