Can a Human Centered Design Approach to Group Antenatal Care Improve Women’s Pregnancy and Birth Experiences?
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By: Priyam Sharda, Design Research Lead for M4ID; Shafia Rashid, Senior Technical Advisor, Family Care International (FCI) Program of Management Sciences for Health
“For the first three months, the baby is just blood. There’s nothing there to take care of,” said one Kenyan father-to-be in Kakamega County, Western Kenya, where we were meeting with communities and health care providers to learn about their attitudes toward women’s health, pregnancy and care at health facilities.
“A baby is a blessing from God,” said the mother-in-law of a pregnant woman during another community discussion. “He alone knows how it grows.”
Using insights from these community discussions, Management Sciences for Health (MSH) worked with M4ID, a social impact design company specializing in development and health, to develop a group antenatal care model that meets the needs of young women, adolescent girls (ages 10–24), and health care providers. With support from the UK’s County Innovation Challenge Fund program, the Lea Mimba project (“take care of your pregnancy” in Swahili) used a human-centered design approach to adapt a successful pregnancy club model that MSH and M4ID developed in the Eastern Ugandan communities of Mbale and Bududa in 2016.