2 research outputs found
Explaining the impact of mHealth on maternal and child health care in low- and middle-income countries: a realist synthesis
Despite the growing global application of mobile health (mHealth) technology in maternal and child
health, contextual factors, and mechanisms by which interventional outcomes are generated, have not been
subjected to a systematic examination. In this study, we sought to uncover context, mechanisms, and outcome
elements of various mHealth interventions based on implementation and evaluation studies to formulate theories
or models explicating how mHealth interventions work (or not) both for health care providers and for pregnant
women and mothers
Combining the theory of change and realist evaluation approaches to elicit an initial program theory of the MomConnect program in South Africa
One of the Sustainable Development Goals is to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less
than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030. In South Africa, the flagship National Department of Health MomConnect
program was launched in 2014 to strengthen the quality of maternal and child health (MCH) services and improve
mortality outcomes. MomConnect was rapidly rolled out with a limited understanding of how and why the
program was expected to work even though studies had shown the effectiveness of the MomConnect program in
improving the uptake of MCH services. This study aimed to unearth the initial program theory of the MomConnect
program based on explicit and implicit assumptions of how the program was organized and expected to work