Overview

Women and children continue to suffer significant illness from preventable causes, particularly in resource-poor settings in our region. Achieving greater equity in maternal and child health in these settings requires an urgent need to develop and promote new strategies, tools and policies.

Burnet is working with many communities to better understand and address the underlying factors that prevent access to crucial health care services such as family planning, postnatal and newborn care, vaccination, management of childhood illness, male engagement and nutrition.

The Maternal, Newborn, Child Health and Nutrition Group contributes to:

• Improving reproductive health, with a focus on pre-conception health
• Reducing maternal and newborn mortality, and optimising care during pregnancy, childbirth and postnatally to reduce adverse pregnancy outcomes
• Reducing preventable causes of morbidity and mortality of children, and optimising growth and development
• Strengthening equitable coverage of preventive care (including immunisation) and curative care during infancy and childhood
• Promoting good feeding practices, food security and integration of nutrition initiatives with other health care services
• Advancement of gender equality, and prevention of gender-based violence
• Increasing the capacity of health professionals, researchers, policy makers and the general community in maternal and child health, and nutrition, through education and training.

Highlights

Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies, is a multi-focused collaborative research program aimed at providing life saving health care for women and children in PNG. Current research includes studies on:

• Health Service for Postnatal and Infancy Care
• The impact of nutrition, malaria and STIs on pregnant women and infants
• Immunity to malaria during pregnancy
• Improved point-of care test to eliminate congenital syphilis.

This program is an excellent example of Burnet’s unique ability to translate research and knowledge into practical and effective solutions that support sustainable and improved health outcomes for some of our most vulnerable populations.

Projects

• Accelerating access to postnatal care and chlorhexidine in PNG
  Scaling-up implementation and education relating to the postnatal period and introducing chlorhexidine for use by families.
• Accelerating healthy agriculture and nutrition
  The overall objective of this multi-sectoral action is to create supportive conditions for enhanced household nutrition.
• ACORN Nutrition Project - PNG
  A program to identify and address key determinants of child undernutrition in PNG.
• ANCP Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies
  The sustainability and expansion phase of the ANCP Healthy Mothers, Health Babies project.
• Collaborative Community Checklists for Immunisation (CCCI)
  Adapting the WHO Immunisation Checklist to increase the uptake of immunisation in Myanmar.
• Engaging men to improve family health and prevent gender-based violence
  ANCP project to contribute to the improvement of the health of men, their families and communities.
• HBMM: Home-based management of malaria in PNG
  Making malaria diagnostics and treatments available at village-level in rural PNG.
• Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies
  A collaborative research program aimed at providing life-saving health care for women and children in PNG.
• HMHB - Health Services for Postnatal and Infancy Care
  Focuses on services during postnatal period and through the first 12 months in East New Britain, PNG.
• Improved point-of-care test to eliminate congenital syphilis
  Optimising and validating an innovative test to enable immediate treatment at the point of care.
• Integrated solutions for healthy birth, growth, and development in Lao PDR
  Testing the effectiveness of an integrated package of community-based interventions.
• MNCH support in Myanmar's Northern Shan State
  This project involves Namhsam, Namtu and Manton townships.
• Pathways to post abortion care in Myanmar
  Understanding women's perspectives on accessing post-abortion care at public hospitals.
• Promoting WASH-nutrition integration in Cambodia
  A stakeholder consultation to identify barriers to the efforts to improve WASH and nutrition.
• The Mbereko + Men Model: Rural Zimbabwe
  A community-based program to improve MNCH services, care and support in the home.
• WHISPER and SHOUT - mHealth interventions among Kenyan sex workers
  Mobile phone-based health promotions sent to sex workers in Mombasa.