Quality Improvement Approaches for Community Maternal and Newborn Care Services: Uganda Experience

In Rural Uganda where government health services only reach 50% of the population, reaching out to the community through community health workers has been an integral part of Maternal Child Health (MCH) services. However, the effectiveness of such community services has not been assured or assessed. This presentation will summarize the experience of applying quality improvement approaches at the community level in selected districts in Uganda. It will present challenges in involving community members in improving and measuring the effectiveness of health care for maternal and newborn services. The intervention strengthened the national policy of establishing and activating the functions of Village Health Teams (VHTs) in all villages of Uganda to scale up community health care. The project partnered with VHTs in the selected areas and empowered them to play an active role in improving and measuring essential newborn care services. Innovative and inexpensive training models, suitable for use in rural Uganda and produced locally, were developed and tested to increase the capacity of community health workers in providing essential newborn care services. Together, these interactions have created a community culture of quality and improved care.