Improving Global Newborn Survival: Building upon Helping Babies Breathe
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Published on: July 14, 2023
1Section of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado, USA, susan.niermeyer@cuanschutz.edu.
Insights
Educational programs targeting key neonatal death causes like birth asphyxia, prematurity, and infection can significantly cut mortality. Scaling up essential newborn care education is crucial for global impact.
Area of Science:
- Neonatal Health
- Medical Education
- Public Health Interventions
Background:
- Neonatal mortality reduction targets require accelerated progress.
- Intrapartum-related events, prematurity, small size at birth, and infection are leading causes of neonatal death.
- Educational interventions show potential to mitigate these causes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the impact of educational programs on neonatal mortality.
- To highlight the importance of comprehensive essential newborn care education.
- To emphasize the need for scalable, high-quality perinatal education.
Main Methods:
- Review of educational programs like Helping Babies Breathe.
- Analysis of program impact on provider behavior and patient outcomes.
- Assessment of perinatal quality improvement initiatives.
Main Results:
- Helping Babies Breathe provided access to resuscitation science and improved provider practices.
- Educational programs have demonstrated changes in provider behavior and patient outcomes.
- Small- and large-scale trials show potential for perinatal quality improvement.
Conclusions:
- Educational programs addressing major neonatal death causes can reduce preventable mortality.
- Scaling up comprehensive essential newborn care education is vital for population-level impact.
- High coverage and quality of perinatal educational programs are necessary to achieve global neonatal mortality targets.
Abstract:
Achieving the targets of the Every Newborn Action Plan by the year 2030 will require accelerating the current reduction in neonatal mortality. Educational programs addressing the three major causes of neonatal death - intrapartum-related events (asphyxia), prematurity and small size at birth, and infection - have the potential to significantly reduce preventable mortality. Helping Babies Breathe is an example of an educational program that not only has given health care providers around the world access to current resuscitation science but has changed provider behavior and patient outcomes and resulted in perinatal quality improvement in small- and large-scale trials. However, to realize impact on neonatal mortality at the population level, perinatal educational programs that comprehensively address all aspects of essential newborn care must be implemented at scale with high coverage and quality.
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