Capitalizing on Community Groups to Improve Women’s Resilience to Maternal and Child Health Challenges: A Protocol for a Human Centered Design Study in Tanzania (Preprint)

Abstract

Maternal and neonatal deaths remain a major public health issue worldwide. Income-generation associations (IGAs) could form a critical entry point to addressing poverty-related contributors. However, there have been limited practical interventions to leverage the power of IGAs in addressing the challenges associated with maternal and childcare.

This study aims to co-design an intervention package with women in IGAs to improve their readiness and resilience to address maternal and child health (MCH) challenges using a human centered design (HCD) approach

The study will employ qualitative descriptive design with purposefully selected women in IGAs and key MCH stakeholders in Shinyanga and Arusha Regions of Tanzania. A four-step adaptation of the HCD process will be employed involving; (i) Mapping of IGAs and exploring their activities, level of women's engagement and MCH challenges faced; (ii) Co-designing of the intervention package to address identified MCH challenges/needs considering acceptability, feasibility and sustainability; (iii) Validation of the emerging intervention package through gathering insights of women in IGAs who did not take part in initial steps and; (iv) refinement of the intervention package with MCH stakeholders based on the validation findings.

The participants, procedures, and findings of each co-design step will be presented. More specifically, MCH challenges facing women in IGAs, a list of potential solutions proposed, and the emerging prototype will be presented. The findings from validation of the emerging prototype with a new group of women in IGAs and its refinement through multistakeholder engagement will be presented. A final co-designed intervention package with the potential to improve women resilience and readiness to handle MCH challenges will be generated.

The emerging intervention package will be discussed in view of relevant literature on the topic. We believe that subsequent testing and refinement of the package could form the basis for scaling up to broader settings and that the package could then be promoted as one of the key strategies in addressing MCH challenges facing women in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

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