Scaling up community mobilisation through women's groups for maternal and neonatal health: experiences from rural Bangladesh

Background: Program coverage is likely to be an important determinant of the effectiveness of community interventions to reduce neonatal mortality. Rigorous examination and documentation of methods to scale-up interventions and measure coverage are scarce, however. To address this knowledge gap, this paper describes the process and measurement of scaling-up coverage of a community mobilisation intervention for maternal, child and neonatal health in rural Bangladesh and critiques this real-life experience in relation to available literature on scaling-up.Methods: Scale-up activities took place in nine unions in rural Bangladesh. Recruitment and training of those who deliver the intervention, communication and engagement with the community and other stakeholders and active dissemination of intervention activities are described. Process evaluation and population survey data are presented and used to measure coverage and the success of scale-up.Results: The intervention was scaled-up from 162 women's groups to 810, representing a five-fold increase in population coverage. The proportion of women of reproductive age and pregnant women who were engaged in the intervention increased from 9% and 3%, respectively, to 23% and 29%.Conclusions: Examination and documentation of how scaling-up was successfully initiated, led, managed and monitored in rural Bangladesh provide a deeper knowledge base and valuable lessons.Strong operational capabilities and institutional knowledge o

Differentials of Light of Consciousness: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the Experience of Vihangam Yogis

The Yogic literatures are replete with examples of several unique mystical experiences in deeper states of meditation. These experiences have nevertheless remained largely untouched by the scientific community, possibly because of the extreme inexplicability of such states and the lack of sophistication in evaluating them. More amenable to scientific research, however, would seem to be the simpler states of awareness in meditation such as that of inner light perception. While a few studies have attempted to explore this state by objective means, the subjective experience of this state remains largely unexplored. The present study originates from an interesting sub-theme identified in an earlier study focused on interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of the experience of inner light perception among Vihangam Yogis. The original study found that the Yogis were very confident in differentiating their experience of inner light perception from other similar experiences. It was thus decided to use IPA to explore the clarity of the differences perceived by the Vihangam Yogis between these experiences. The present study reveals that the meditators could clearly differentiate the state colloquially termed "inner light perception" from (a) external light perception, (b) imagination and (c) dreams. The meditators gave detailed descriptions of their perception of the differences between these experiences, which suggests that the subjective state of inner light perception could be quite different from that of those experiences which the authors have termed differentials of inner light perception. The conclusion reached is that, in addition to further empirical study by means of the traditional modalities and measures, vigorous qualitative study of the subjective dimensions of the state of inner light perception is warranted, with this study indicating that IPA is especially effective in the latter regard