London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The module focusses on maternal and newborn health worldwide, and the close links between the health of women and babies. It uses an interdisciplinary lens to explore inequities in maternal newborn health and access to high quality healthcare. Students will have opportunity to evaluate possible options for improving access and the provision of quality care from both a health system and a person-centred perspective. Specific focus is given to maternal newborn health and stillbirth in high mortality contexts.

The overall module aim is to:

• Provide students with an overview of maternal and newborn health, including stillbirth, and the role of quality, equity and access to healthcare on survival and health of pregnant women and babies worldwide.
• To apply interdisciplinary learning to problem identification and to the design and evaluation of strategies to improve quality, equity and access to healthcare for pregnant women and babies within a high mortality context.

Intended learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of the module a student will be able to:

1. Discuss critically current inequities in patterns in maternal newborn survival and health including stillbirth, and the underlying factors, including the role of high-quality healthcare;
2. Appraise critically evidence for interventions to improve quality/equity/access for Maternal Newborn Health in high mortality contexts;
3. Conceptualize how/when/where to intervene at different levels of the health system to overcome quality/equity/access barriers to evidence-based Maternal Newborn Healthcare, and to evaluate the relative merits of the different interventions/options;
4. Effectively synthesise and present context-relevant programmatic interventions to improve quality/equity/access for Maternal Newborn Health in specific high mortality settings or populations.

Mode of delivery

This module will be delivered hybrid, with predominantly face-to-face teaching modes for London-based intensive MSc students and DL blended learning students and online modes for students studying on the intensive online MSc Sexual & Reproductive Health Policy and Programming. For all students there will be a combination of live and interactive activities (synchronous learning where all students, online or face-to-face, are expected to attend at the same time) as well as pre-recorded materials and selfdirected study (asynchronous learning).

Assessment

The assessment for this module has been designed to measure student learning against the module intended learning outcomes (ILOs) as listed above. The grade for summative assessment will contribute to the overall award GPA. 

The assessment for this module will be mixed-mode, with the individual written assessment submitted via Moodle, and the group poster presentation examined as part of a synchronous hybrid poster presentation session.

Credits

• CATS: 15
• ECTS: 7.5

Module specification

For full information regarding this module please see the module specification.