Evaluating the effect of child and maternal care policies on health and care using routine data from low - income settings

Improving child and maternal health and care has been a priority in low -income
countries for decades, and is still a high priority in the international policy agenda

. Interventions in low-income settings have encompassed the provision of specific services
,
or
more broadly
the
strengthening
o
f
local
health care systems. Indeed
, in resource
-
constrained settings,
Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn,
Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH)
, alongside communicable diseases,
represent
the bulk of
primary and community care provision, and the most
effective interventions rely on integration
as
part of
primary care facility activities
[2][3]
.
Most initiatives have been evaluated i
n isolation
. T
here
is less evidence on how
these
may act together, whether they compete or complement each other,
and on h
ow
ultimately,
they
affect
care and
health.
Most importantly,
appropriate methodologies for
doing so with quantitative evaluations have been hampered by the limited, although growing,
availability of routine data with a spatially and temporally extensive
, and detailed enough coverage