Implementing effective community‑based surveillance in research studies of maternal, newborn and infant outcomes in low resource settings
Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BMC
Abstract
Background: Globally adopted health and development milestones have not only encouraged improvements in the
health and wellbeing of women and infants worldwide, but also a better understanding of the epidemiology of key
outcomes and the development of effective interventions in these vulnerable groups. Monitoring of maternal and
child health outcomes for milestone tracking requires the collection of good quality data over the long term, which
can be particularly challenging in poorly-resourced settings. Despite the wealth of general advice on conducting field
trials, there is a lack of specific guidance on designing and implementing studies on mothers and infants. Additional
considerations are required when establishing surveillance systems to capture real-time information at scale on pregnancies,
pregnancy outcomes, and maternal and infant health outcomes.
Main body: Based on two decades of collaborative research experience between the Kintampo Health Research
Centre in Ghana and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, we propose a checklist of key items to
consider when designing and implementing systems for pregnancy surveillance and the identification and classification
of maternal and infant outcomes in research studies. These are summarised under four key headings: understanding
your population; planning data collection cycles; enhancing routine surveillance with additional data collection
methods; and designing data collection and management systems that are adaptable in real-time.
Conclusion: High-quality population-based research studies in low resource communities are essential to ensure
continued improvement in health metrics and a reduction in inequalities in maternal and infant outcomes. We hope
that the lessons learnt described in this paper will help researchers when planning and implementing their studies.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
Maternal, Neonatal, Infant, Research, Randomised controlled trials, Population-based, Community, Surveillance