Saving Children’s Lives Through Community-Based Health Interventions: Bringing Together the Evidence for What Works

Beginning in 2007 with support and input from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Bank, Future Generations has been actively facilitating and supporting a global systematic review of Community-Based Primary healthcare (CBPHC). To date, thousands of articles have been reviewed and over 650 articles have been included in the review of both child, and more recently added, maternal health interventions that have a community-based component.

The effort is being led by Dr. Henry Perry, a former Future Generations faculty member now at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), with collaboration from Meike Schleiff, Assistant Professor and Director of Research at Future Generations and a doctoral candidate at JHSPH, and many others. The team is currently doing in-depth reviews of neonatal health, maternal health, and health equity with additional analyses to follow.

The study has identified a number of approaches with potential and evidence for high impact community-based work, including the importance of home visiting programs, community case management of child illnesses, participatory women’s groups, and utilization of mobile health teams to provide additional outreach services.

In May 2016, the findings of the systematic review were presented at the CORE Group annual meeting, where a global network of practitioners focusing on improving maternal and child health got to review key findings and also provide feedback and discuss the way forward.

For more information about this exciting and unique systematic review, you can check out previous publications at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17441690903330305. You can also contact Meike Schleiff for more information.

PDFs:
Building on the Current Evidence to Strengthen Community-Based Service Delivery Strategies for Promoting Child Survival 

Groundbreaking Review of Community-Based Approaches