Two Internship Opportunities with UCSF Safe Motherhood Program: San Francisco and Zambia

The Safe Motherhood Program at the University of California, San Francisco is looking for two interns: one office intern to be based in the San Francisco office and one field intern to be based in the Copperbelt region of Zambia.

1.) UCSF Safe Motherhood Office Intern, San Francisco – Summer 2012

The focus of this internship is to prepare presentations for an upcoming international conference in order to effectively show the latest data on the non-pneumatic anti-shock garment (NASG) for obstetric hemorrhage clinical trial.  The intern will also gain some experience in handling and cleaning a large data set.

For more information on the trial please visit www.lifewrap.organd http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00488462.

Duties:

• Assist with data cleaning and analyses for the international trial for the non-pneumatic anti-shock garment (NASG) for obstetric hemorrhage
• Prepare multiple Power Point presentations to include data for an upcoming international conference
• Other light administrative duties as required

Qualifications:

• Excellent Power Point and writing skills are a must!
• Knowledge of STATA, SPSS, Word, Excel.
• Experience with online data systems is a plus.

Start date: June 1, 2012.

Duration: 12 weeks, 40 hrs/week

Note: This internship is unpaid.

Please send CV, cover letter and a writing sample to Jennifer Clark at jclark@globalhealth.ucsf.edu.

Please apply by 2/15 to be considered for initial screening.

2.) UCSF Safe Motherhood Zambia Field Intern – Summer 2012

The focus of this internship is to support the Zambia team of the non-pneumatic anti-shock garment (NASG) trial.  The study aims to reduce maternal mortality and morbidities in Zambia and Zimbabwe caused by obstetric hemorrhage.  This is a cluster randomized control study which compares outcomes based on evidence from intervention and control clinics.  The intervention clinics in this study are the clinics that are using the NASG as a first aid device for patients suffering from hypovolemic shock caused by bleeding during pregnancy.

For more information on the trial please visit www.lifewrap.organd http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00488462.

Duties:

• Provide logistical support for the local Zambian team – distributing supplies, copies, etc
• Review data collection forms
• Encourage protocol adherence
• Conduct training with local hospital and clinic staff
• Visit the study clinics
• Follow up on cases
• Liaise with the San Francisco office and the in-country staff

Qualifications:

• Experience in international settings
• Interest in maternal health
• Research experience
• Familiarity with clinical environments
• Must be highly detail-oriented, organized and have excellent follow-through skills

Start Date: May 30, 2012

Duration: 12 weeks, 40 hours/week

Note: Candidates are expected to secure outside funding to cover roundtrip airfare and living expenses for the duration of the internship.

Please send cv, cover letter and a writing sample to Jennifer Clark at jclark@globalhealth.ucsf.edu.

Please apply by 2/15 to be considered for initial screening!

View past intern experiences on our intern blog: http://lifewrapinterns.wordpress.com/.

UCSF Safe Motherhood Internship in the Copperbelt of Zambia

The Safe Motherhood Program at UCSF is looking for interns to work in the Copperbelt of Zambia from August – October, 2011.

Interested? Check out the details below!

This internship is based in the Copperbelt Region of Zambia.  The intern will work on a study which aims to reduce maternal mortality and morbidities in Zambia and Zimbabwe caused by obstetric hemorrhage.  This is a cluster randomized control study which compares outcomes based on evidence from intervention and control clinics.  The intervention clinics in this study are the clinics that are using the NASG (Non-pneumatic Anti-Shock Garment) as a first aid device for patients suffering from hypovolemic shock caused by bleeding during pregnancy.

Some of the duties of the intern are:

• Providing logistic support for the local Zambian team – distributing supplies, copies
• Reviewing data collection forms
• Encouraging protocol adherence
• Conducting training with local hospital and clinic staff
• Visiting the study clinics
• Following up on cases
• Liaising with the San Francisco office and the in-country staff

Desired qualifications:  Experience in international settings, interest in maternal health, research experience, familiarity with clinical environments.  Must be highly detail- oriented, be well-organized and have excellent follow-through skills.

Note: This internship is unpaid. Intern must provide their own airfare and living expenses.

To apply, send cover letter and cv to:

Elizabeth Butrick

NASG Project Director

ebutrick@globalhealth.ucsf.edu

Radha’s Story: Unforeseen Consequences of Cash Payments for Institutional Deliveries

This is the third post in a series on maternal health in rural Jharkhand, India. 

At 4am, Radha’s body became completely stiff. Then came the convulsions.

Radha, a newly married young woman in a small village in rural Jharkhand, was pregnant with her first child and her due date was just one week away.

Radha’s story paints a personal picture of the issues that pregnant women face in rural Jharkhand–and it points to conceptual questions and unforeseen consequences of Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), a national program that aims to increase institutional deliveries across India. Her story raises big picture questions that merit further investigation, especially given the scope, cost, and potential of JSY, the largest conditional cash transfer program of its kind in the world. Radha’s story also sheds light on some of the implementation challenges and the pockets of the population that seem to be left out, beyond the reach of JSY.

Radha wears dramatic sindor along the part of her hair, the unmistakable red powder that makes clear she is a married woman. Photo by: Kate Mitchell

Against the wishes of her in-laws, Radha had left her husband’s village and returned to her parents’ home in a small village in the Seraikela block of Jharkhand. She was planning to deliver her baby in her parents’ community and at home, just as her mother, Prema, had given birth to her at home 18 years earlier.

Radha’s decisions to return to her parents village and to deliver at home are not uncommon practices in India.

Returning to the parental village

In India, women are often married at a very young age. In rural Jharkhand, 73.4% (National Family Health Survey of India, NFHS-3) of women are married before the age of 18. Once they are married, they go to live with their husband’s families where they take on the often demanding role of daughter-in-law that traditionally involves cooking, cleaning, and collecting water and firewood for the entire family. It is an age-old tradition that once women reach the 8th or 9th month of pregnancy with their first child, they return to their parents’ community where they spend the final month(s) of pregnancy and deliver the baby. This tradition is often cherished by women as it offers them some much-needed respite from their daughter-in-law duties, and a chance to reconnect and spend time with their families.

Home delivery

According to the National Family Health Survey of India, only 40.8% of deliveries in India occur in an institution–and in rural Jharkhand, where Radha lives, significantly fewer women opt for institutional care with only 11% of babies born within health facilities.

Prema, Radha's mother, is the mother of six children--Radha was the fourth, but the first to survive beyond one year of life. Photo by: Karl Gruschow.

According to Prema, Radha’s in-laws had recently learned about a government program that is providing a cash payment of 1650 rupees (approximately 40 US dollars) to women who opt for institutional delivery over the traditional practice of home delivery. Prema said that the decision of where Radha would deliver caused a conflict between the two families. She said that Radha’s in-laws wanted Radha to deliver in an institution in their district—and Prema did not seem to believe that their motive was entirely about a safe delivery.

It is unclear what motivated Radha’s in-laws to push for her to remain in their district for the delivery. Did they believe that institutional delivery was a safer option and want to keep her close to ensure that she delivered in an institution?

Or, were they pushing Radha to deliver within their district so that they would have access to the cash payment?

Was it a combination of the two—a promise that Radha and the new baby would receive care in the event of a complication, sweetened with a little cash?

Whatever their motives were, the conflict that arose between the two families is one unforeseen consequence of Janani Suraksha Yojana.

While a little tension between in-laws might not seem like such a big deal, it points to  bigger questions about the unanticipated repercussions of providing women, who may or may not have the autonomy within their families to command how and when to use the money, with cash on a conditional basis linked to a new behavior, institutional delivery,  that they may or may not want to adopt. The idea that JSY might be becoming a source of conflict among other families, as it is in Radha’s family, and influencing in-laws to try to keep daughters-in law in their districts for delivery, leaves me with several questions:

• To what extent might JSY be creating barriers for women hoping to follow the cherished tradition of returning to their parents’ community for the last month of pregnancy and delivery of their first child?
• What ethical considerations does cash introduce to women’s decisions about where to give birth? The money is obviously aimed at encouraging women to pursue a safe delivery, but the women involved are often younger than 18 and often have only limited capacity within their husband’s families to influence decisions about new behaviors.
• Who actually controls the money?
• Whom is actually incentivised by it?

If it is the parents and the in-laws who are most concerned with and/or motivated by the cash payment (and will have the most control over how the cash is used), how can JSY be modified to ensure that the wants and needs of rural women are not overlooked? How might policy makers ensure that JSY does not interfere with the tradition of going to the parental village for delivery or further restrict the autonomy of young newly married women to make decisions, while still promoting institutional delivery?

During our time talking with women in the Seraikela block of Jharkhand, it seemed to me that women were far more motivated by an awareness of potential complications and an assurance that they and their babies would be cared for than they were by the promise of a one time cash payment.

A few weeks back, we met a woman named Sita who had just delivered her second baby. Her first child is now four years old. Sita initially planned to deliver at home but when her labor seemed to go on for too long, she chose to go to an institution. In her case, this was a feasible and reasonably safe plan—as the institution was only a half an hour away from her home and her family had access to a vehicle that could be used to reach the facility. Sita explained that the reason she went to the institution was because she was afraid; “If I die, what will happen to my son?” To Sita, the cash seemed like a nice bonus—but far from a deciding factor.

Sita, mother of a four-year old, chose to deliver her most recent baby in an institution due to her fears about who would care for her four-year old if she did not survive the delivery. Photo by: Kate Mitchell

This idea that women are motivated to seek care when they believe institutions will provide them with high quality care is illustrated by the three delays framework for understanding maternal mortality. The framework shows a direct arrow between the quality of care within the facility (perceived or actual) and a woman’s decision to seek care. This means that her perception of the quality will play a big role in whether she seeks care for the first time, but it also means that if the woman seeks care, and it turns out to be poor quality, she might not ever choose to seek care again and her experience might also influence the behavior of other women.

Through the National Rural Health Mission, the government has hired an extensive system of community health workers who are working to increase awareness and identification of maternal and newborn danger signs, and encourage women to seek care. Through JSY, the government is providing women with a cash payment that sometimes serves as an incentive and other times as a partial reimbursement for costs associated with seeking care. But, what happens when the women reach the institution? It is important to remember that the type of care they find will play a role in whether they (and their sisters, sisters-in-law, and friends) continue to seek care.

Just a few days ago, the Times of India ran a story about this issue:

“…The NRHM hired over 8.5 lakh* women as Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), mostly village women with minimum Class VIII education, to provide preventive health services in villages including taking pregnant women for antenatal check ups, organising immunization camps, dispensing basic drugs and educating people about hygiene practices. About 6.5 lakh have completed their training and have started work. Though ASHAs have boosted the utilisation of public health facilities in many places, the facilities themselves have not been upgraded to take the increased load.”

Sita’s story combined with an understanding of the three delays framework makes me wonder what would happen if the government, who aims to increase institutional deliveries, took on the challenge of dramatically improving the quality of care within institutions as one of their strategies for increasing the number of women who deliver within health facilities.

In Radha’s case, it seemed that tradition, Radha’s parents’ wishes, and Radha’s own wishes would trump Janani Suraksha Yojana, the cash provided by the program, and the wishes of the in-laws. It also seemed that, for Radha and her parents, cash was not enough to persuade them to choose institutional delivery over home delivery. For she was home with her parents when the convulsions began, and she had no plans to go to an institution.

But when Radha’s family was awakened by her uncontrollable shaking, the trajectory of events changed course.

Radha’s story will continue in upcoming posts…

—————————————————————————————————————

*One lakh, part of the Indian numbering system, is equal to 100,000. 

Note: We have changed the names in this series, in order to provide a level of privacy to the families who shared their stories.

Tata Steel Rural Development Society, my host organization for my fellowship, provided us with transportation and interpreter services. Many thanks to Shabnam Khalid for her help with translation. 

Cash on Delivery? Putting JSY’s Payments in Context

This post is the second in a series on maternal health in the Seraikela block of Jharkhand, India. 

Janani Suraksha Yojana, or JSY, is a conditional cash transfer program first instituted by the government of India under the National Rural Health Mission in 2005.  A 2010 review published in The Lancet in 2010 characterized JSY as “a conditional cash transfer scheme, to incentivize women to give birth in a health facility,” and “the largest conditional cash transfer scheme in terms of number of beneficiaries” JSY is driven by two important assumptions that are shared by many development practitioners and policy makers around the world:

1. Conditional cash transfers can be effective in reducing poverty and promoting gender equity. As with other national conditional cash transfer programs, the cash that is entailed in JSY is part of an effort to overcome barriers to service use – such as awareness and cost; and to give money directly to poor women who otherwise may have little access or control over cash.
2.  Increasing institutional delivery will lead to a decline in maternal and newborn deaths. Therefore, according to the government’s guidelines for JSY, “the scheme’s success is determined by the increase in institutional delivery among poor families.”

While the program aims to reach poor women across India, it is not applied the same everywhere and, by design, invests the most in the states where institutional delivery is lowest, including Jharkhand. As one of the focus states for JSY, women in Jharkhand have access to greater amounts of money than in other states, and must fulfill fewer conditions to attain it. This means that, while there are restrictions on age, number of previous children and income level in many states, any woman in Jharkhand who gives birth is entitled to the full incentive if they give birth in a facility, whether public or private and government-accredited; and to a smaller amount (for “nutrition assistance”) if they give birth at home.

Among the government officials and health workers we talked to, there seemed to be a broad consensus on the fact that the program is having an effect on what women do. According to one government official, before JSY, “The government institutions were seeing zero deliveries. In four years of JSY implementation, this number jumped to 39 percent.” On a visit to one of the primary health centers, which are staffed by auxiliary nurse midwives, who are trained to perform normal deliveries, a group of ANMs showed us the labor room – which is equipped with three birthing tables, but now, they told us, is often so crowded that laboring women end up using the countertops in that room and the neighboring office instead. However, despite this consensus on the impact of JSY, we came across only one person – a doctor at the main hospital where women from Seraikela are referred for complicated deliveries – who declared “they just come for the money. Without the money, they wouldn’t be here.”

While the cash that women are entitled to under JSY is perhaps the most visible component of the program, it may not always be the most important factor in women’s decision-making – or even the most significant payment.

Sahiyas are also entitled to a payment of 600Rs (around $13) for each woman they assist. Though the implementation guidelines for JSY require that sahiyas’ work be assessed based on the number of women they accompany to the health center, their payment relies on fulfilling many more conditions – some of which they may complete successfully, but may not persuade women to deliver in public facilities. Sahiyas are responsible for completing duties well beyond the trip to the health center: they are responsible for identifying and registering pregnant women who are eligible for the scheme, and ensuring that they have the documents they need to access funds, preparing a “micro-birth plan” detailing the expected delivery date, place and possible referral institutions, to accompanying women to health facilities and providing follow-up care and arranging immunizations in the weeks after a baby is born. The JSY scheme relies on community health workers, known as Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) throughout India, and known in Jharkhand as sahiyas, who are paid for the assistance they provide to women and babies. The women we asked about the cash incentive told us that they had received 1650 Rs (around $40) in exchange for delivering in the health facility, an amount which includes both the incentive and additional funds to cover transportation costs.

The role of the sahiya that is defined in the government’s guidelines seems clearly designed to motivate sahiyas to persuade women to use government health facilities. After all, when this happens, everyone gets paid. And, indeed, the scheme often seems to work this way. In Sini, a village located 20 minutes by car (a mode of transportation not always accessible to the people who live there) from a primary health center, and perhaps an hour and a half from the main hospital, a sahiya named Sudha told us simply, “Everyone goes to the institutions now—not because of the money, but because they are afraid of complications.” As we walked around her village, talking to women who had given birth recently, this seemed to be the case. In fact, as we sat with a group of the village’s women, one introduced a newcomer to the group as a woman who had given birth at home a few years ago – “back before we knew about the risks.” The things we learned in Sini suggested that both the sahiyas and the women they serve are following the script written by the government: the sahiya raises awareness, touched with a little bit of fear, and the women absorb the information, and proceed to delivery in the government facilities. At the end of the day, everyone gets paid, and institutional delivery increases.

If our interviews ended there, we would have walked away with an idea that JSY is working according to the guidelines, even if this is slightly different from how it is frequently discussed.

In another village, which was located around half an hour from the nearest private hospital, we found a very different story. Sita, who had given birth to her daughter a month earlier, told us that she had originally planned to deliver at home, as she had her son, who is now four. But, after being in labor for more than a day, she started to worry, “If I stay here, if something will happen, then what will I do?” At that point, she called her mother, who arrived in a borrowed car from her own village, half an hour a away, and took her, her husband and sister-in-law to the private hospital, which she had heard was better – and closer – than any public facilities.  Her daughter was born a few hours later, with no complications, and the two were discharged the next day. The village’s sahiya, Radha, who was looking on as we interviewed Sita, explained that she had not gone with the family because she had broken her arm – and because there was no room in the car. As she beamed with pride at Sita, “one of the finest ladies in the village,” Radha told us that she had filed the paperwork for Sita’s payment a few days before. Though this meant that Sita’s payment would be late, and, in all likelihood, Radha would not get paid at all, the matter seemed almost an afterthought: the money would come, sure, because Sita was entitled to it. It was not enough to cover the cost of the private hospital, which was 2500Rs, but Sita had saved some money in case she needed to pay for hospital fees, and she now plans to set the money from JSY aside for her daughter.

Where JSY – and other cash transfer programs – are often presented along the narrow lines of cash in exchange for a pre-defined healthy behaviour – in this case, institutional delivery in a public facility, in action, things are much more complicated. It is possible that people do not always want to talk about the way that cash influences the choices they make about something so momentous as childbirth, even from the few people we talked to, it seemed pretty clear that their choices, though often health-seeking, did not necessarily conform to the conditions defined by JSY–and were not necessarily strongly motivated by cash. There seemed to be no shortage of knowledge about the risks that go with having a baby, or of the ability for some health institutions to provide some help, whether for a normal delivery or as for Sita, a place to go when things seemed to be going wrong.

The more we talked to sahiyas and new mothers, the more questions followed. For a program that is so reliant on community health workers, discussions of JSY rarely address the ways in which different sahiyas may influence women and what factors are influencing them.

Does it matter that some sahiyas live in communities where the private facilities have better reputations, even if they are more expensive and there is no financial incentive for the sahiya? Is it possible that the payments sahiyas receive throughout the year ultimately influence women’s choices more than the one payment that the women receive on giving birth?

If we follow the government guidelines for assessing sahiyas, it is clear that the sahiyas in Sini are more successful, but if we also consider Sita’s ability to make and act on a plan to seek care in a nearby facility in an emergency, we are left with a different possible definition of success. It might be worth asking how JSY might allow for a broader view of what women want and need. This seems especially important in a community like Seraikela where some health facilities are reasonably accessible, but where private facilities may be too expensive and public facilities are not yet equipped to meet the demands that would come with 100 percent institutional delivery, the current goal of JSY.

Note: All names used in this post are pseudonyms.

Tata Steel Rural Development Society, the host organization for Kate’s fellowship, provided us with transportation and interpreter services. Many thanks to Shabnam Khaled for her help with translation. 

Janani Suraksha Yojana and the Bumpy Road to Maternal Health in Rural India

This post is the first in a series on maternal health in the Seraikela block of Jharkhand, India. 

In 2009, Sarah Blake and I worked together at the Maternal Health Task Force, a Gates Foundation funded maternal health initiative based at EngenderHealth in New York City. Since then, Sarah went on to work as a consultant with several non-profit organizations, including UNFPA and Women Deliver.  I took off for India as a Clinton Fellow with the American India Foundation where I have been working for the past nine months on a maternal and newborn health project in Jharkhand, a state with high levels of maternal and newborn deaths.

A new mom holds her newborn in a small community called Sini, in the Seraikela block, as community members look on.

Sarah and I recently teamed up again (this time, in India) to explore our common interest in maternal health. Over the past two weeks, we have visited hospitals, health centers, government offices, rural villages, and homes in the Seraikela block, a rural area with rugged terrain and limited infrastructure outside the industrial city of Jamshedpur, in the state of Jharkhand.  We conducted a series of interviews with women, families, health workers, and government health officials. We asked questions about pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. We learned about the women’s experiences with home and institutional deliveries–and the factors that influence their decision to deliver at home or in an institution. We explored the implementation of and attitudes toward Janani Suraksha Yojana, a conditional cash transfer program that aims to increase institutional deliveries across India.

A collapsed road on the way from Jamshedpur to the Seraikela Block of Jharkhand.

Conditional cash transfers are trendy. Various governments, non-governmental organizations, and private enterprises across the globe are supporting cash transfer initiatives in efforts to improve school attendance, reduce child under-nutrition, improve maternal and newborn health, and to address other development goals.

What is a conditional cash transfer program? According to the World Bank, “conditional cash transfer programs provide cash payments to poor households that meet certain behavioral requirements, generally related to children’s health care and education”.

Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) is a widely discussed (mostly within the global health community but to some extent in mainstream media) and frequently praised cash transfer program. JSY was launched by the Indian government as part of the National Rural Health Mission in 2005, in an effort to reduce maternal and newborn deaths by increasing institutional deliveries.

JSY provides cash incentives to women who deliver in government health institutions as well as accredited private health centers. The program also provides a cash incentive to the health worker who supports the woman throughout her pregnancy and accompanies her to the facility. (For details and FAQs on JSY, click here.)

A community health worker accompanies a pregnant woman to Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Jamshedpur, the main referral hospital for the surrounding rural communities.

Maternal and newborn death rates have gradually been declining across India (and the world), but the problem has yet to be resolved. Both maternal and newborn deaths in India continue to make up an extremely large percentage of the overall global burden. According to a study published in the Lancet last year, 20% of global maternal deaths and 31% of global newborn deaths in 2005 occurred in India.

JSY is a big program (the biggest of its kind in the world) that aims to deal with a big problem. The lessons that are drawn from it have the potential to influence global health policy in a big way. The 2010 evaluation of JSY published in the Lancet suggested that the program is having a significant impact on perinatal and neonatal health, but the paper asserted that the verdict was still out in terms of any impact on maternal mortality.

The lesson that has emerged from JSY for newborn health is that giving women money increases institutional deliveries and reduces perinatal and neonatal mortality.  It is likely that the same message will emerge in terms of reducing maternal mortality—and there is a good chance that this approach will be picked up in national health programs in numerous other countries that also have high levels of maternal and newborn mortality.

Our concern is that JSY is far more complex than providing women with money—and reducing maternal mortality is far more complex than increasing institutional delivery.

Given the scope, cost, and potential of JSY; it is incredibly important that we ask questions about the nuances of JSY—the role of money as an incentive for women, families and health workers; the readiness of institutions;  the challenges with transportation; the human rights implications of the program; and a variety of other related factors.

Over the next week (or couple of weeks), Sarah and I will share our experiences and insights from our time with the women, families, health workers, and government health officials of the Seraikela block of Jharkhand, a focus state for JSY. We will highlight stories from the people most impacted by and involved in Janani Suraksha Yojana.

We believe that we have scratched the surface of some interesting issues related to JSY, but our time in Seraikela certainly left us with more questions than answers, and we will be sharing those questions in upcoming posts.

We will also be asking our colleagues working in maternal and newborn health to share their thoughts through guest blog posts. If you are interested in submitting a guest post, contact us at katemitch@gmail.com and sarahcblake@gmail.com.

Tata Steel Rural Development Society, my host organization for my fellowship, provided us with transportation and interpreter services. Many thanks to Shabnam Khaled for her help with translation. 

Historic Legal Action: The Families of Two Women Sue the Ugandan Government Over Deaths in Childbirth

On May 27th, Sarah Boseley reported on her Global Health Blog that the families of two women who died in childbirth have taken legal action against the Ugandan government, asserting that the women’s rights to life and health were violated.

Sarah Boseley’s Global Health Blog, The Guardian

“…The case is unprecedented in Uganda. Aid agencies and medical charities and donor governments can condemn the death toll in pregnancy and childbirth, but the most powerful argument is the devastating testimony of those who suffer.

Sylvia Nalubowa died in Mityana hospital on 10 August 2009 from the complications of obstructed labour. She was carrying twins, one of whom was delivered. The second died with her. Jennifer Anguko died in Arua regional referral hospital on 10 December 2010 when her uterus finally ruptured after 15 hours of obstructed labour. Her status as a district councillor brought her no favours – she was said to be the fourth woman to die in that hospital that day…”

Read the full story here.

Job Opportunity: Lusaka Coordinator, Safe Motherhood Team, Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, UCSF

The Safe Motherhood Program is currently hiring for the Lusaka
Coordinator position. The successful candidate will be based in Lusaka, Zambia and will work on a Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial (CRCT) for the Non-pneumatic Anti Shock Garment (NASG).  Candidates can apply directly online through the UCSF Careers page. Deadline to apply is May 31st, 2011!

See below for more info on the position.

Job Title: Lusaka Coordinator

Job Code and Payroll Title:  7234 ANALYST I

Req Number: 35590BR

Position Start Date: July 15, 2011

Job Summary: The Lusaka Coordinator is responsible for data management,
reporting, site administration and project support on a Cluster
Randomized Clinical Trial (CRCT) for the Non-pneumatic Anti Shock
Garment (NASG). The study, supported by NIH/NICHD and the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, is to demonstrate if the NASG saves the lives
of women hemorrhaging in childbirth. The candidate will be required to
live full time in Lusaka, Zambia. Duties include providing research,
administrative and logistical support to the study. Duties would include
all forms of clinical trial coordination for this hospital and clinic
based study, including data form review for completeness and accuracy,
case tracking, logistics and supplies, training coordinators and data
collector/clinicians on clinical and study protocol adherence,
completion of protocol violation and adverse event documentation,
administrative oversight and mentoring and supervising student interns
(medical, nursing, midwifery, and public health students).

The Lusaka Study Coordinator will serve as part of the Safe Motherhood
Team of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, Department of
Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at UCSF; will serve as
the local liaison between the NASG studies in Lusaka, Zambia and the
investigators and project staff at UCSF; will serve as the
administrative and research team leader for Lusaka, collaborate with the
UCSF Copperbelt, Zambia Coordinator as a peer, and will report directly
to Elizabeth Butrick, the NASG Study Director in San Francisco. Willing
to commit for at least 6 months, with a possible extension depending on
the availability of funds.

Required Qualifications: BA/BS with a major in a related field and one
year of experience in administrative analysis or operations research; or
an equivalent combination of education and experience; at least three
months of experience in a developing country; excellent attention to
detail, good organizational skills; competent in EXCEL; proficient in
Word, Internet; problem Solving Skills.

Preferred Qualifications: MPH or master’s in related field; experience
with research; ability to train, mentor and guide others; experience
with data management systems; knowledge of maternal health issues;
experience in Africa.

Note: Fingerprinting and background check required.

Note: Position to end six months from the date of hire, with the
possibility to be extended.

Internship Opportunity for Summer/Fall 2011: Safe Motherhood in Zambia!

The Safe Motherhood Program at UCSF is accepting applications for an upcoming internship opportunity in the Copper-belt of Zambia. The intern will spend the majority of their time in the labor and gynecology wards at a district hospital and several peri-urban clinics, gaining an understanding of front-line maternal health service delivery and research.

Position Description:

This internship is based in the Copperbelt Region of Zambia.  The intern will work on a study that aims to reduce maternal mortality and morbidities in Zambia and Zimbabwe caused by obstetric hemorrhage.  This is a cluster randomized control study that compares outcomes based on evidence from intervention and control clinics.  The intervention clinics in this study are the clinics that are using the NASG (Non-pneumatic Anti-Shock Garment) as a first aid device for patients suffering from hypovolemic shock caused by bleeding during pregnancy.

Some of the duties of the intern include:

-Providing logistic support for the local Zambian team – distributing supplies, copies, etc.
-Reviewing data collection forms
-Encouraging protocol adherence
-Conducting trainings with local hospital and clinic staff
-Visiting the study clinics
-Following up on cases
-Liaising with the San Francisco office and the in-country staff

Desired qualifications: Experience in international settings, interest in maternal health, research experience, familiarity with clinical environments.  Must be highly detail-oriented, be well organized and have excellent follow-through skills.

Time requirements: Must be able to commit a minimum of 2 months in the Copperbelt, although 3 months is preferred.

Compensation/Funding: Interns must secure their own funding for travel and lodging. There is no funding for these positions but it is valuable experience for someone who wants to make a huge difference in women’s lives.

To learn more about the NASG (Life Wrap), visit: www.lifewrap.org.

If interested, please send your CV and cover letter to Elizabeth Butrick at ebutrick@globalhealth.ucsf.edu, with a copy to Kathleen McDonald at kathleen.p.mcdonald@gmail.com

Global Health Corps Expands to 70 Fellowships, Including Placements with a Focus on Maternal Health

The Global Health Corps is now accepting applications for their fellowship placements in Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and the USA.

I learned about this opportunity from Emily Bearse, a GHC fellowship alum, current GHC staff member, and grad school buddy of mine!  Here is what Emily had to say about it:

“Being a GHC alum from their inaugural class as well as working on their staff team now, I truly believe GHC has a great model and the power to build the movement for global health equity. We are built on a unique partnership model where we work with existing organizations addressing pressing issues in under-served communities. We partner one national with one international fellow at each site to promote knowledge sharing and synergies in order to create deeper impacts in the communities where fellows serve. We engage people from outside the traditional health space in order to bring valuable expertise to strengthen health systems.”

Emily also mentioned that GHC is offering several placements with Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Millennium Villages Project, and mothers2mothers–organizations with a strong focus on maternal and child health.

Excerpt from the press release:

“Global Health Corps is expanding this year to support 70 emerging leaders in their 2011-2012 fellowship class. Applications for placements in Burundi, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and the USA are now open at www.apply.ghcorps.org.  GHC is seeking applicants with diverse skill-sets from areas that are often viewed as outside of the traditional health workforce—managers, communicators, architects, computer scientists, supply chain analysts and other exceptional young people from disciplines important to building strong health systems.

‘The complexity and scope of today’s challenges requires people with diverse skills from a wide range of fields beyond medicine. To truly shift the tide of global health challenges, we need to engage young leaders from all backgrounds.’ Barbara Bush, cofounder and CEO said.

Global Health Corps aims to mobilize a global community of emerging leaders to build the movement for global health equity. GHC does this by providing young leaders year long paid fellowships with outstanding organizations working on the frontlines of the fight for global health equity…”

Read the full press release here.

For more info about the Global Health Corps, click here.

Folk Dance is Used to Convey Maternal and Newborn Health Messages in Rural India

On Monday, I traveled with my colleague, Anupam Sarkar, a nutrition and newborn health expert and Project Advisor for the Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative (MANSI), to Hudu, a small, hard-to-reach village amidst forest, steel plants, and roaming wild elephants. It took us nearly 2 hours from Jamshedpur, weaving around and cutting through steel plants and villages along bumpy and muddy roads–the same roads that pregnant women must travel on if they opt for institutional delivery. We were heading to Hudu to observe a Seraikela Chhau peformance.

Seraikela Chhau is a traditional form of dance that originates in the Seraikela block of Jharkhand, part of the eastern steel belt of India. Over the past six months, I have been working as a Clinton Fellow with the Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative in the Seraikela block. MANSI is a partnership between the American India Foundation, Tata Steel Rural Development Society, and the local government—with technical support from SEARCH. As part of our project activities, our team has recently coordinated a series of Seraikela Chhau performances that will combine the native dance form with key maternal and newborn health messages throughout the 174 villages of our project area.

When Anupam and I arrived in Hudu, we learned that a pair of twins had recently passed away in the village and we decided to visit the family before the performance began. We are conducting similar home visits for every maternal and newborn death that has been reported in our project area (spanning 174 villages) since the baseline survey was completed in 2009. The goal of the home visits is to gain a better understanding of the ground realities and knowledge gaps so that we can shape and inform the messages of the MANSI health communication campaigns in a way that meets the needs of the communities.

The local health worker guided us to the home where the twins had passed away. The parents were not at home–but we were able to meet with the paternal grandparents, Asha and Ganesh Sardar.

 

They shared their story…

The mother of the twins, Vilasi, is 28 years old. She and her husband, Ragdu, already had four children, all girls, and the family was  eager to have a boy. Soon they became pregnant with twins, one girl and one boy. All four of the previous children were delivered at home without complication–and the family assumed that this delivery would also be free of complications. They explained that they were unaware of the benefits of institutional delivery. When the twins were born, they seemed very small. Immediately following delivery, the mother put the babies to her breasts to feed them. They were weak and unable to suckle. Initially the family thought about giving them goat’s milk–but eventually decided to give sugar water (locally called Misri Pani). When it became clear that the babies were extremely weak and in critical condition, the family wanted to take the infants to the hospital but they had not anticipated the emergency. They were not prepared. They did not have a transportation plan or money set aside. One baby died the very same day–and the other died the following day.

We thanked the grandparents for sharing their story and asked them if it would be OK if we also shared their story with other communities. The grandparents agreed and the grandfather said, “After losing the twins, I have come to know about the importance of institutional delivery. Why not share our story and let others also come to know?”

It is tough to know precisely what led to the death of the twins—and if giving birth in a facility would have made a difference. But it is clear that many factors were stacked against them. The family was faced with poor roads, long distances to health centers, limited resources, combined with a lack of information at the community level about birth spacing and planning, care of low birth weight babies, danger signs, institutional delivery, and information on how to tap into government schemes that offer cash incentives for institutional delivery—all potential topics for future Chhau performances.

With the story of the twins on our minds, we returned to the center of the village to observe the performance.

With no electricity in the village, the performers rigged their loud speaker system to their vehicle battery. They began beating their drums and singing loudly, calling on community members to gather in the village center.

It did not take long for community members to gather, all curious to know what the commotion was about. They formed a crowd of boys and girls, and men and women of all ages. Soon the drumming and singing picked up pace, a performer dressed in a traditional colorful costume with a big mask jumped out from behind the vehicle, and the show began!

The performers acted out various situations, using dance and drama to cover several critical maternal and newborn health topics—with a focus on the importance of institutional delivery, birth planning/preparedness, and the five cleans of safe delivery. The audience watched with great enthusiasm.

As we traveled the bumpy roads away from Hudu, a jagged rock punctured our tire–delaying our return to Jamshedpur and reminding me of the numerous barriers that women face in accessing care. While we waited for the tire to get repaired, I thought of the twins and the grandparents who we interviewed. I also thought of the Chhau dance and all of the community members in attendance. That day, I witnessed the consequences of the various factors that were stacked against the twins. I also witnessed one strategy for building community awareness of critical maternal and newborn health information. I left feeling confident that the Chhau performance that we observed will help to equip the community of Hudu with key information about maternal and newborn health—and will serve as one of many important steps toward the overall goal of protecting the health of women and infants in the Seraikela block.

The Paperless Partogram: The 20-Second Tool for Preventing Prolonged Labor

On November 15th, Maternova, an organization that conducts continuous research into the latest innovations impacting maternal and newborn health, featured the “paperless partogram” on their blog. The blog post explains that for the past thirty years, the partogram has been the recommended practice for preventing prolonged labor in low-resource settings–but it seems that not all health workers find it to be an appropriate tool for the contexts in which they work.

Maternova

“…The partograph is a low-cost tool for saving the lives of mothers and babies. But does that mean it is an appropriate tool? Dr. A. K. Debdas of India would say no. Even after the WHO simplified the partograph model to make it more user-friendly in 2000, the partograph is still rarely used in low-resource areas, and, when actually used, it is rarely interpreted correctly (2). Debdas argues that the WHO’s partograph fails to meet the organization’s own requirements for appropriate technology: the partograph has not been adapted to local needs, is not acceptable to those who use it, and cannot be used given the available resources. Debdas believes the partograph is simply too time-consuming for overburdened clinicians and too complicated for many skilled birth attendants—many of whom have not received higher education.

Dr. Debdas proposes a new, low-skill method for preventing prolonged labor—the paperless partogram. It takes 20 seconds, requires only basic addition and the reading of a clock or watch, and holds potential for more effectively mobilizing clinicians to prevent prolonged labor. Appropriate on all counts…”

Click here to read the full post on the Maternova blog and learn how the “paperless partogram” works!

And while you are on the Maternova site, be sure to check out the Health Innovations page. I found the “Baby Bubbles” and the “Salad Spinner Centrifuge for Anemia” particularly interesting…

Global Health Reporting Fellowship with the International Reporting Project, Apply Now!

The International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University is offering two groups of fellowships this spring: International Journalism and Global Health Reporting.

Up to five fellows will be selected for the Global Health Reporting Fellowship with the International Reporting Project. They will be given five weeks to report on a specific topic in global health such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, or maternal and child health.

“Fellows will spend two weeks in Washington at the IRP offices preparing for their overseas trips and then five weeks reporting on their chosen health topics in the country of their choice. Fellows will return to Washington for a final two weeks of reporting and presentations of their findings.”

Eligible candidates are journalists based in the United States with five years of professional experience in journalism.

The dates of the fellowship are March 3, 2011 to May 7, 2011.

Deadline to apply is December 20, 2010.

For more info, click here.

Click  here to apply!

New Report Shows that HIV Positive Women in Chile are Facing Major Reproductive Rights Violations

The Center for Reproductive Rights has released, Dignity Denied: Violations of the Rights of HIV-positive Women in Chilean Health Facilities, an in-depth investigation into the issue of discrimination against HIV positive women in Chile—specifically when seeking reproductive health services. 

In an email I received from colleagues at the Center for Reproductive Rights, they wrote:

“Over a period of six months, we spoke with 27 women in five different regions of Chile, gathering their stories. The research confirmed what we already knew from a previous study carried out by VIVO POSITIVO—women living with HIV/AIDS were frequently pressured not to become pregnant, were often scolded by healthcare workers for wanting to do so, and were sometimes pressured, coerced or forced to undergo surgical sterilization. The Center wanted to make clear that the abuse and mistreatment suffered by HIV-positive women are violations of their human rights…”

Excerpt from the report:

“In 2004, Julia received the good news that her viral load was undetectable. With this improvement in her health and after witnessing other HIV-positive women give birth to healthy, HIV-negative children, Julia and her partner decided to try for a child in consultation with a private physician. however, despite the low risk of mother-to-child transmission (mTCT), healthcare professionals repeatedly chided Julia after she became pregnant, telling her, ‘What were you thinking? Don’t you see that you are going to have a sick child?’

During the first trimester of her pregnancy, Julia began experiencing an orange-colored vaginal discharge. Concerned, she went to the hospital to have it checked out. Instead of treating her, however, hospital workers turned her away and told her to return for her regularly scheduled check-up. She was admitted to the hospital three days later, hemorrhaging and with severe abdominal pain, but she still sat untreated…”

Download the full report here. 

Community Health Workers Compete to Develop Creative Slogans and Images to Improve Maternal and Newborn Health in Jharkhand, India

On Wednesday, September 29th, nearly 300 community health workers from 174 villages in the rural Seraikela block of Jharkhand, India came together for an interesting event that involved plenty of art supplies, a flurry of creative ideas, a tangible passion for and dedication to improving rural maternal and newborn health, and a little bit of healthy competition.

The gathering, part of the Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative (MANSI), was an effort to develop effective behavior change communication tools for four maternal health interventions being implemented through MANSI– by tapping into the vast knowledge, experiences, and creative capacity of the newly identified community health workers.

Holding the belief that there is no better source of ideas for effective slogans and images than the community itself, MANSI staff coordinated a contest that called on community health workers to develop slogans and images to explain the importance of the MANSI health interventions. The thinking behind the contest was that if the artistic representations of the health interventions and the key messages come from within the communities, then the images and messages will be more likely to resonate with the community members—and ultimately the health practices will be more likely to be widely understood and adopted.

Before the contest began, the MANSI team provided an overview of the four maternal health interventions that the health workers would be developing images and slogans for: Misoprostol for post-partum hemorrhage, intermittent preventive treatment for Malaria, Vitamin A supplementation, and deworming. (In-depth training on these interventions will take place in the coming months.) Craft supplies were distributed and the nearly 300 health workers spent one hour competing to develop the most creative, compelling, and scientifically accurate slogans and images to be used as behavior change communication tools throughout the MANSI project.

A panel of judges made up of doctors, public health professionals, and government officials recently selected three winning submissions for each health intervention. The winners received prizes and their slogans and images are being incorporated into the final behavior change communication strategy for the MANSI project.

Check back soon for a short video about the the winning submissions!

To learn about another initiative that is tapping into creative energy to improve maternal health, visit MDGfive.com. MDGfive.com is a global project that is uniting artists around the world to use their collective artistic abilities to develop multimedia maternal health advocacy pieces.

Getting Started With MANSI, the Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative, in Jharkhand, India

I am back to blogging after a few weeks break to get settled in India!

I arrived in Jharkhand, India  just over a month ago. I am here as a William J. Clinton Fellow with the American India Foundation. I transitioned out of my previous role at the Maternal Health Task Force at EngenderHealth just after the Global Maternal Health Conference in Delhi. (Click here to view archived videos of the conference sessions.)  I was craving on-the-ground experience in program implementation and I was looking forward to working at the community level—to put to action the knowledge I gained during my time at the MHTF as well as the program planning skills I learned while completing my MPH in International Health at Boston University.

Mother and Baby, Jharkhand, India--Photo by Kate Mitchell

The people of India face some of the highest levels of maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity in the world.  Jharkhand, a newly formed state in India, faces higher maternal and newborn mortality ratios than India as a whole. And the villages of the Seraikela block, a region of Jharkhand with difficult geographic terrain and low levels of literacy, experience even higher ratios than the state.

My fellowship placement has already offered me some remarkable experiences (I’ll be writing about those experiences in upcoming posts)–and mentors who are working together to improve maternal and newborn health in Seraikela from a number of different angles and organizations.

My assignment is with a new public-private partnership that aims to improve maternal and newborn health in Seraikela at the community and facility level. (Click here to read about recent conversations at the Global Maternal Health Conference focused around striking the right balance between community and facility based interventions.)  MANSI, the Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative, is being implemented by Tata Steel Rural Development Society, a division of Tata Steel’s corporate social responsibility wing, and the American India Foundation in partnership with the local government. (Click here for a recent post by Alanna Shaikh on corporate players getting involved in global health.) 



MANSI is a replication of the Home Based Newborn Care (HBNC) project that was originally (and very successfully) implemented by SEARCH in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, India. The MANSI team is working closely with SEARCH to train community health workers from 174 villages within the Seraikela block on the HBNC curriculum, a set of modules that prepares community health workers to address the leading causes of newborn mortality and morbidity in India.  The team will also be training the health workers on a number of interventions that will target the health of the mother–as well as upgrading several sub-centers within the Seraikela block to be equipped to handle normal deliveries and improving referral systems for complicated deliveries.

Mother and Infant Wait to be Seen at a MNCH Clinic Under A Banyan Tree, Jharkhand, India---Photo by Kate Mitchell

Much of what I will be doing over the next ten months is helping to develop training modules for the maternal health interventions that will be added onto the HBNC model–as well as helping to conduct the training. 

I am really excited to be a part of the MANSI team.  It is going to be an exciting and challenging ten months–and I promise to keep you posted:)