Measuring Coverage in MNCH: New Findings, New Strategies, and Recommendations for Action

Jennifer Bryce, Fred Arnold, Ann Blanc, Attila Hancioglu, Holly Newby, Jennifer Requejo, Tessa Wardlaw and the CHERG Working Group on Improving Coverage Measurement

PLOS Medicine, 2013, vol. 10, issue 5, 1-9

Abstract: Measuring Coverage in Maternal and Child Health: New Findings, New Strategies and Recommendations for Action In this overview of the PLOS Medicine Collection on “Measuring Coverage in Maternal and Child Health, Jennifer Bryce and colleagues discuss how and why some of the indicators now being used to track intervention coverage may not provide fully reliable measurements, draw together strategies proposed across the Collection for improving these measurements and make recommendations for action.Considerable progress has been made in reducing maternal, newborn, and child mortality worldwide, but many more deaths could be prevented if effective interventions were available to all who could benefit from them. Timely, high-quality measurements of intervention coverage—the proportion of a population in need of a health intervention that actually receives it—are essential to support sound decisions about progress and investments in women's and children's health. The PLOS Medicine “Measuring Coverage in MNCH” Collection of research studies and reviews presents systematic assessments of the validity of health intervention coverage measurement based on household surveys, the primary method for estimating population-level intervention coverage in low- and middle-income countries. In this overview of the Collection, we discuss how and why some of the indicators now being used to track intervention coverage may not provide fully reliable coverage measurements, and how a better understanding of the systematic and random error inherent in these coverage indicators can help in their interpretation and use. We draw together strategies proposed across the Collection for improving coverage measurement, and recommend continued support for high-quality household surveys at national and sub-national levels, supplemented by surveys with lighter tools that can be implemented every 1–2 years and by complementary health-facility-based assessments of service quality. Finally, we stress the importance of learning more about coverage measurement to strengthen the foundation for assessing and improving the progress of maternal, newborn, and child health programs.Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001423 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/fil ... 01423&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pmed00:1001423

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001423

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Medicine from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosmedicine ().