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Effectiveness of the Home Based Life Saving Skills training by community health workers on knowledge of danger signs, birth preparedness, complication readiness and facility delivery, among women in…

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, June 2016
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Title
Effectiveness of the Home Based Life Saving Skills training by community health workers on knowledge of danger signs, birth preparedness, complication readiness and facility delivery, among women in Rural Tanzania
Published in
BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, June 2016
DOI 10.1186/s12884-016-0916-x
Pubmed ID
Authors

Furaha August, Andrea B. Pembe, Rose Mpembeni, Pia Axemo, Elisabeth Darj

Abstract

In spite of government efforts, maternal mortality in Tanzania is currently at more than 400 per 100,000 live births. Community-based interventions that encourage safe motherhood and improved health-seeking behaviour through acquiring knowledge on the danger signs and improving birth preparedness, and, ultimately, reduce maternal mortality, have been initiated in different parts of low-income countries. Our aim was to evaluate if the Home Based Life Saving Skills education by community health workers would improve knowledge of danger signs, birth preparedness and complication readiness and facility-based deliveries in a rural community in Tanzania. A quasi-experimental study design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of Home Based Life Saving Skills education to pregnant women and their families through a community intervention. An intervention district received training with routine care. A comparison district continued to receive routine antenatal care. A structured household questionnaire was used in order to gather information from women who had delivered a child within the last two years before the intervention. This questionnaire was used in both the intervention and comparison districts before and after the intervention. The net intervention effect was estimated using the difference between the differences in the intervention and control districts at baseline and endline. A total of 1,584 and 1,486 women were interviewed at pre-intervention and post intervention, respectively. We observed significant improvement of knowledge of three or more danger signs during pregnancy (15.2 % vs. 48.1 %) with a net intervention effect of 29.0 % (95 % CI: 12.8-36.2; p < .0001) compared to the comparison district. There was significant effect on the knowledge of three or more danger signs during childbirth (15.3 % vs. 43.1 %) with a net intervention effect of 18.3 % (95 % CI: 11.4-25.2; p < .0001) and postpartum for those mentioning three or more of the signs (8.8 % vs. 19.8 %) with net effect of 9.4 % (95 % CI: 6.4-15.7; p < .0001). Birth preparedness practice improved for those who made more than three actions (20.8 vs. 35.3 %) with a net intervention effect of 10.3 % (95 % CI: 10.3-20.3; p < .0001) between the intervention and control district at pre-intervention and post intervention. Utilisation of antenatal care with four visits improved significantly (43.4 vs. 67.8 %) with net effect of 25.3 % (95 % CI: 16.9-33.2; p < .0001), use of facility delivery improved in the intervention area (75.6 vs. 90.2 %; p = 0.0002) but there was no significant net effect 11.5 % (95 % CI: -5.1-39.6; p = 0.123) compared to comparison district. This study shows that a community-based intervention employing community health workers as teachers in delivering Home Based Life Saving Skills program to pregnant women and their families improved their knowledge of danger signs during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum, preparedness for childbirth and increased deliveries at health facilities which employ skilled health workers in this rural community.

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The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 271 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 1 <1%
Tanzania, United Republic of 1 <1%
Unknown 269 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 54 20%
Researcher 30 11%
Student > Bachelor 30 11%
Student > Postgraduate 19 7%
Student > Ph. D. Student 19 7%
Other 52 19%
Unknown 67 25%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 69 25%
Nursing and Health Professions 52 19%
Social Sciences 24 9%
Psychology 8 3%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 7 3%
Other 34 13%
Unknown 77 28%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 04 June 2016.
All research outputs
#15,377,214
of 22,876,619 outputs
Outputs from BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
#3,007
of 4,207 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#211,714
of 339,291 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
#47
of 67 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,876,619 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 22nd percentile – i.e., 22% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,207 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.8. This one is in the 20th percentile – i.e., 20% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 339,291 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 29th percentile – i.e., 29% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 67 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 20th percentile – i.e., 20% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.