Safer motherhood 2000: toward a framework for behaviour change to reduce maternal deaths

This paper, produced by The Communication Initiative, is intended as a tool to encourage dialogue and generate feedback from qualitative researchers and communication programme planners, who share responsibility for the design and implementation of effective safe motherhood research and communication interventions. The paper re-emphasises the need for focused, innovative, participatory research and community development methodologies. The author argues that safe motherhood communication planners should “cast a wider net” to include reviews of models available from other technical areas. The paper proposes a draft framework for a thematic approach that prioritises behaviour change interventions to focus on maternal mortality reduction. Several community-based tools and approaches are also described.

The paper aims to bring several potentially useful new methodologies and approaches to the attention of safe motherhood communication planners. It outlines various concepts, ideas, and models used in countries that have already focused on maternal mortality reduction and by other disciplines. The author concludes that these could be collaboratively adapted to enhance work in safe motherhood communication and maternal mortality reduction.[adapted from author]