Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

Readiness to Learn in the Early Years: Learning Lessons for Scale

Early cognitive development will be promoted through this program to treat malnourished children in rural Bangladeshi health clinics, improving the knowledge and skills of both mothers and field staff in early cognitive development. The anticipated outcome: improved language skills among children, as well as better mental and psychomotor development. The project takes advantage of a time when kids and their parents are interacting with health clinics to provide more than just calories.

In Peru, 2 out of 10 children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, negatively impacting their growth and development in later life. Timely diagnosis through nutritional status screening and monitoring are paramount; however, they are not routinely done and are subject to measurement errors. A novel body measurement data capture system, based on the use of mobile technologies and image processing, will allow on-site capture of body images of children for automated nutritional status assessment.

Microfinance-based Community Health Worker Program

Canadian not-for-profit World Wide Hearing Foundation International (World Wide Hearing) will develop a hearing loss diagnostic kit for use by rural healthcare workers, and a newly created Canadian company, Hearing Access World, will screen and quickly equip people in need with high-quality hearing aids at a fraction of the usual $2,000 to $3,000 cost.

One third of child deaths in Guyana result from respiratory distress or bacterial infection in the first few weeks of life. Although infant mortality rates have improved in Guyana, the numbers today correspond with those in the U.S. and Canada in the early 1970s, before the extensive availability of neonatal intensive care units. Slightly under half of all babies in Guyana are born in the nation’s largest city and capital, at Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).

Randomized Open Controlled Trial on Kangaroo Mother Care versus Traditional Care for Low-Birth-Weight Infants: Patient Centered Outcomes at the Age of 18 years