Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/P016103/1
MANTRA: Increasing maternal and child health resilience before, during and after disasters using mobile technology in Nepal
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor MH Fordham, University College London, Institute for Risk and Disaster Reductio
- Co-Investigator:
- Dr V Le Masson, University College London, Institute for Risk and Disaster Reductio
- Co-Investigator:
- Dr SC Baral, HERD International, Research, Monitoring and Evaluation
- Co-Investigator:
- Dr NM Saville, University College London, Institute for Global Health
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor P Kostkova, University College London, Institute for Risk and Disaster Reductio
- Science Area:
- Earth
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Science Topics:
- Geohazards
- Mobile Computing
- Medical science & disease
- Womens and Gender Studies
- Community Art inc A & H
- Abstract:
- In emergency situations, women of childbearing age do not stop becoming pregnant or giving birth. However, humanitarian emergencies often negatively impact health care systems, through damaged or destroyed critical infrastructure which restrict perinatal women and their newborns access to reproductive and maternal health care. This is particularly the case in rural remote regions, such as mountainous areas of Nepal, where frequent earthquakes and landslides pose significant hazards to an already limited healthcare infrastructure. Understanding the needs of perinatal women and newborns in emergencies and developing adequate interventions to increase their resilience (i.e. their capacities to protect themselves and recover), should be part of any Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) planning or response and yet these needs are often unmet. In such crises, Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs), who generally support mothers and encourage them to seek care in the perinatal period, may themselves be cut off from the health facilities that they serve and may be struggling to cope in the same way as other community members. Urgently needed information and knowledge may exist but be inaccessible for a number of reasons including: inappropriate use of technical language, text-based information inaccessible to those with low or no literacy, denigration of local knowledge, restrictions on the freedom of movement or access to communications of women and girls, and infrastructure damage that obstructs travel to and from healthcare services. Empowering women to improve their health has been successfully implemented by UCL IGH, in partnership with Nepalese NGOs, by training FCHVs to run participatory learning and action women's groups focused upon maternal and newborn health. This community-based intervention was found to reduce mortality in the first month of life (i.e. during the neonatal period) by 30% in Nepal (Manandhar at al 2004) and has been effective in reducing neonatal and maternal mortality (Prost et al 2013). However, to date this approach has not been oriented towards resilience during emergencies, and neither has it been adapted to take advantage of the rapid growth in access to mobile technology in developing countries. Therefore, this project investigates how to improve access to information and communications to support maternal and child health before, during and after a disaster. It aims to do this by developing mobile technology to support and expand existing participatory learning public health interventions and social protection mechanisms, especially in rural areas of Nepal. By doing so, this initiative addresses some of the priorities highlighted in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 to support maternal, newborn and child health, as well as sexual and reproductive health. This research combines geosciences (e.g. scientific knowledge of natural hazards and risk assessments based on satellite imagery), social sciences (e.g. attention to gender, vulnerability and health in the context of disasters), technology (e.g. mobile apps) and arts (e.g. through participatory learning, and visual and textual health care communications) to devise new ways of rapidly deriving data from satellite interpretation and fieldwork that can be developed into a meaningful risk interpretation for local communities. Through adding a mobile phone 'app' the objective of this project is to make evidence-based information (e.g. oral survivor accounts, locally-generated photographs, drawings, videos, stories, and historical recollections) and learning wider-reaching and accessible, especially when paper booklets or picture cards might be unavailable or damaged and when disasters have cut off lifeline infrastructure.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/P016103/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Directed - International
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- GCRF-Resilience
This grant award has a total value of £167,175
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Exception - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DA - Estate Costs | Exception - Staff | DI - Staff | Exception - T&S | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £11,492 | £9,323 | £39,503 | £2,670 | £10,914 | £16,934 | £50,314 | £4,488 | £21,537 |
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