Simply referred to as the Maternal and Newborn Scale-Up (MANeSCALE), the technical name of this project is “A Quality Improvement Change Package to strengthen hospitals/Health Centre IVs and save 1000 newborn babies and 100 mothers in Uganda.”
The project covers six hospitals and six high volume Health Centre IVs. MANeSCALE aims to improve clinical outcomes for mothers and babies in existing public and private not for profit hospitals and referring high volume lower level units by implementing an improvement change package which includes a new advanced newborn care training course with mentorship, an electronic data system with easy feedback to managers for decision making, leadership engagement in quality improvement and improving the referral within and between hospitals and health centres . It is estimated that introducing this enhanced package in 12 hopsitals/health centers (6 hospitals and 6 health centre IVs) in eastern Uganda could save 1000 newborn babies and 100 mothers lives within 3 years. The program will be documented and the change package presented to government and key stakeholders with a view to inform scale up. The project builds on our already existing project (the Maternal and Newborn Scale up project) that focused on strengthening a regional network of hospitals (in Busoga region) for improvement in quality of maternal and newborn health around the time of birth.
General objective: To improve the quality of newborn care at hospital and health center IVs in Busoga Region in Uganda thereby reduce newborn mortality and morbidity
Specific objectives
In a network of hospitals and lower level referral units, we aim to:
Increase clinical competency of a critical mass of health staff at 6 hospitals and 6 HCs IVs to provide newborn care
Strengthen leadership capacity and clinical governance within regional, district and facility teams, and institutionalize quality improvement processes
Develop and introduce simple low cost electronic registers and tools for data capture, analysis and decision making to be used at facility and district level
Introduce closed user group systems to improve referral between and within the hospital and referring health centers
To upgrade targeted hospitals and HCs to ensure essential commodities, supplies and infrastructure to meet national newborn care standards
To demonstrate that this combined package of interventions (‘the change package’) drives improvement in newborn outcomes in supported facilities,
Provide guidance for MOH on how this change package could be introduced more widely to hospitals/HCs in Uganda, including costing, key elements, and implementation requirements.
Engage key government, donor and implementing partners in the change package, key results and determining implications for policy and programming and develop a road map for replication beyond Eastern Uganda
Start Date: 1st July 2017
Duration: 3 years
Funder: ELMA Philanthropies, Social Initiative, Einhorn Philanthropies
Contacts
Principal Investigator: Associate Prof. Peter Waiswa
E-mail: pwaiswa@musph.ac.ug