BetterBirth: A Trial of the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist Program

Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)157,689 enrolled

Overview

The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of a checklist-based childbirth safety program (the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist Program) on reduction of severe maternal, fetal, and newborn harm in institutional deliveries in north India.

The WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist Program is a quality improvement program designed to support health workers to deliver evidence-based practices to women and newborns around the time of institutional childbirths. At the program's core is the Safe Childbirth Checklist, a 31-item list of essential practices that target the major causes of maternal and newborn mortality in low-resource settings globally. The program was developed over 3 years by a partnership of WHO and HSPH, working with a large international network of experts and stakeholders in maternal, fetal, and newborn health. Pilot testing of the program at a public-sector birth center in south India demonstrated dramatic improvements in health worker adherence to essential childbirth-related clinical care standards. The current study is a matched-pair, cluster randomized trial to measure the efficacy of the program in reducing severe maternal and newborn harm. This trial will be conducted at approximately 120 health facilities in Uttar Pradesh, India.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

157,689

Conditions

Maternal Death Maternal Morbidity Stillbirth Neonatal Death

Interventions

WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist ProgramBEHAVIORAL

The IHF group will receive the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist Program designed to maximize likelihood of effective and sustained uptake of the program by birth attendants in the designated facilities. The program includes three key implementation steps that involve: engagement of leadership and clinicians at the state, district, and local levels, a formal launch to introduce the Checklist, and support through peer coaching and data feedback. The intervention facilities will also receive a standardized maternity register to ensure appropriate data collection.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * For measuring outcomes, inclusion criteria are all mothers admitted to a study site for childbirth and newborn babies who are to be followed-up. In case a mother or baby from an enrolled site is referred out to another facility (before or after delivery) the mother-baby dyad will be included in the study and the outcome will be allocated to the referring facility * For a smaller subset of birth events (approximately 4,650 deliveries total), health worker practices will be observed to measure the impact of the SCC program on delivery of essential practices, as a secondary outcome. A convenience sample of women who agree to observation and their babies cared for by the health workers around the time of childbirth at the facility during data collectors' duty hours will be included in this component of the study. Exclusion Criteria: * Mothers who have been referred into the facility by an inter-facility transfer. * Mothers being managed for abortion. * Mothers who refuse consent for follow-up

Locations (1)

PSI

Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Percentage of Participants With Composite Measure of Perinatal Death, Maternal Death, or Maternal Severe Complications Within 7 Days

The primary outcome was a composite outcome of events occurring within the first 7 days after delivery, incorporating stillbirth; early neonatal death; maternal death; or self-reported maternal severe complications, including seizures, loss of consciousness for more than 1 hour, fever with foul-smelling vaginal discharge, hemorrhage, or stroke.