Global Health Research

The Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP) works in four focus districts of Malawi to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes, increase the use of family planning, integrate activities related to the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) with ongoing maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) activities, and prevent and treat malaria.

To achieve its goal of supporting the Ministry of Health and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)/Malawi to accelerate the reduction of maternal, neonatal and child mortality through increased utilization of MNCH services and the practice of healthy maternal, neonatal and child behaviors, MCHIP is focusing on the following results:

Facility Level: • Increased access to and availability of high-quality, facility-based essential maternal and newborn care and child and postpartum family planning services.

Community Level: • Increased adoption of household behaviors that positively impact the health of mothers, newborns and children under five years of age; and • Increased availability of community-based maternal newborn health (MNH) services through Health Surveillance Assistants.

Enabling Environment: • Strengthened MNH policies, planning and management in place at the national, zonal and district levels • Increased commitment of resources for MNH from the Government of Malawi and other donors; and • Strengthened planning and monitoring of MNH activities at the community level....

Through a $65 million, five-year award from the U.S. Agency for International Development, Jhpiego is leading a consortium of partners to implement the “Support for Service Delivery Excellence (SSD-E)” Project in Malawi. The consortium also includes Save the Children, CARE and Plan International. Designed to help the country successfully reduce fertility and population growth, lower the risk of HIV and reduce maternal, infant and under-five mortality rates, the project focuses on scaling up access and quality of an essential package of health services at local facilities and mobilizing communities to utilize these services covering a population of 6.6 million. Project goals are to ensure that: 1) service delivery is “reaching the unreached” in communities; 2) health surveillance assistants and volunteers are working together to optimize service delivery; 3) all providers in target districts are actively supported by a clinical mentor and have strengthened their essential health services and clinical and interpersonal skills; 4) performance-based incentives are employed at multiple levels to stimulate quality, demand and access; and 5) the Ministry of Health has capable, district-level partners to outsource future community mobilization, health promotion and support for service delivery functions.

About Jhpiego:

For nearly 40 years, Jhpiego, (pronounced "ja-pie-go"), has empowered front-line...

This project is formed by the ongoing HIV Malawi HIV Research Consortium (HRC) which includes the College of Medicine (COM) in Malawi, the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, NC and the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD. In recognition of the long history of these collaborations, JHU will continue to serve as the primary grantee institution and lead the Administrative Component of the proposed Clinical Trials Unit (CTU). This country-wide consortium includes the resources of the two main medical facilities in Malawi, the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre and the Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe (they will represent the Clinical Research Sites). The HIV/AIDS epidemic is severely impacting the health of children, adolescents, men and women in Malawi. In some of these populations, the HIV prevalence is more than 30% and HIV incidence is more than 4 per 100 person-years. The Malawi HRC has developed a long-term collaboration focused on a wide spectrum of HIV research that includes most aspects of HIV prevention, HIV treatment and care and nascent vaccine efforts. This consortium has inspired several cutting-edge research projects and very extensive training and technology transfers. Each participating institution brings...