The Big Idea: Violence against women is a critical concern for public health. The growing evidence base for the bystander intervention approach to preventing sexual and domestic violence in university settings shows the potential to engage men, as well as women, positively in ending violence against women.
The Big Idea: Expectations, needs and values of pregnant women and their families are often not considered in the design of maternity services. A co-design process engaged women, their families and providers, in negotiating expectations and standards of care, resulting in simple, easy-to-use tools.
The Big Idea: Men are often the decision-makers about contraceptive use but programs usually focus on women. Men often lack the knowledge or skills to make informed decisions as a couple. By engaging men through peers, couples can make joint decisions on spacing births.
The Big Idea: Neonatal mortality reduction can be achieved with a simple, low-cost package of interventions that includes home visits to whole households by community health workers and consistent community engagement with newborn care stakeholders to change social norms, focusing on locally meaningful practices that community members believe are within their control to change, in this case prevention and management of hypothermia.
The Big Idea: Existing self-help groups of women, even when formed for other sectors, offer sustainable platforms building on women’s social capital and peer networks, to empower them to become change agents for themselves and their peers on maternal, child and newborn health.
The Big Idea: This study tested a large-scale community-based strategy to improve newborn health through participatory women's groups facilitated by the government’s community health workers, Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs).
The Big Idea: Program managers aiming to improve maternal and neonatal outcomes are familiar with complications such pre-eclampsia (PE) and eclampsia, and are tasked with determining the most effective prevention, early detection and care approaches. One promising initiative bridges the gap between health providers and the community by engaging leaders of women’s groups to empower pregnant women with the knowledge and skills to be engaged clients throughout the pregnancy continuum.
The Big Idea: Self-efficacy is a contributing factor in the practice of many healthy behaviors, but rarely do programs isolate and emphasize self-efficacy as its own key outcome. By breaking down the components of self-efficacy, including goal-setting, skill development, positive feedback loops, and high external expectations, it is a comparatively easy factor to change.
The Big Idea: Programs that increase demand for family planning services often address the information needs of women but usually fall short in preparing them to be active and engaged communicators during counseling, and often neglect to engage men as active partners. Mobile technology for women and men shows promise in prompting couple dialogue and increased use of contraceptives.
The Big Idea:   Given resource constraints, communication programmers often field questions about the numbers of channels and numbers of contacts needed to achieve change. This analysis of a program that aimed to improve infant and young child feeding in Ethiopia analyzed the dose response associated with significant behavior change.
The Big Idea: Classic classroom-based trainings show limited effectiveness in improving provider skills, and disrupt busy health facilities when providers are called out for multiple trainings. Alternative models to strengthen provider competency and confidence in delivering family planning services may include on-site training.
The Big Idea: Managers who oversee programs that help strengthen maternal, newborn and child health outcomes often directly target the mother. A novel program in Nigeria targets fathers-to-be through mobile phones, providing them with simple, carefully timed text messages to share with their wives and to learn how to help care for her and the baby.
The Big Idea: Infections in the neonatal period cause up to on-quarter of neonatal mortality, including pneumonia, sepsis, and infections of the umbilical cord. Handwashing with soap could potentially reduce the risk of infection during the vulnerable neonatal period.
The Big Idea: First time and continued use of labor and delivery services is often affected by how they feel they are treated by providers. Most interventions to improve client satisfaction with labor and delivery services often focus on training providers. More successful interventions might also target facility managers and clients.
The Big Idea: Managers tasked with overseeing humanitarian efforts need to work with partners to finance and deliver services to meet the basic needs of displaced refugee children. Poor households often cannot afford even the residual costs of school participation including transport to school. A recent analysis of a monthly cash payment when children enroll in school shows the impact of this transfer on children's health and well-being, as well as school attendance.
The Big Idea: SBC programmers recognize the value of good counseling. But to what extent does the quality of counseling impact health outcomes through behavior change? This study assessed enhanced counseling for preventing HIV acquisition during pregnancy and throughout the breastfeeding period.
The Big Idea: Women are often the focus of interventions to improve maternal and newborn health, but they make decisions within the larger context of family and community. This program in Egypt worked through locally embedded community development associations (CDAs), many of which had minimal health programming experience, to engage caregivers, their social networks and their communities to encourage better household decision-making by increasing knowledge and promotion of healthy behaviors.
The Big Idea: In some communities, sexual assault has reached epidemic proportions, which leads to serious short and long-term health consequences, including early pregnancy, HIV and mental health issues. An empowerment and self-defense course may help adolescent girls to decrease sexual assault and harassment.
The Big Idea: In Sierra Leone, like many countries around the world, women comprise the majority of voters but are underrepresented in national and sub-national decision-making processes. This gap impedes progress in achieving gender equality and advancing inclusive development. Women’s savings group provide a platform to inspire and support women to take office.
The Big Idea: Even as trends in nutrition improve in rural areas, pregnant and lactating women may lack needed nutrients for their own health and their child’s health and growth. A multi-sectoral model that combined a farmer field school model with nutrition and hygiene education into farmer for the poorest women demonstrated improved results through women’s dietary diversity.
The Big Idea: Many pregnant women who have suffered from a traumatic past pregnancy/delivery, or are pregnant and preparing to deliver for the first time, may fear or lack confidence in the available services. These feelings affect women’s decisions about service use and trauma after childbirth. Antenatal education programs increase women’s confidence and reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) following delivery.
The Big Idea: For many health behaviors, self-efficacy is a key determinant. This meta-analysis determined the most effective ways to improve self-efficacy related to increasing physical activity.