A team at the Makerere University School of Public Health, Kampala, embraced the importance of a systems lens that considers how numerous levels and partners dynamically interact to advance or stall maternal and newborn health. Knowing that they had to address capacity gaps across health-system levels, the team sought to consolidate the gains previously realized by embarking on the Maternal and Neonatal Implementation for Equitable Systems project (MANIFEST) detailed in this volume.
MANIFEST supported community outreach in the form of community health worker (CHW) home visits, coupled with community awareness (dialogues, radio) and community capacity strengthening (community savings and transport initiatives) to ensure that, with community support, mothers and families felt empowered to seek timely care. To ensure that this increased demand was met with quality services, MANIFEST also facilitated enabling environments for healthcare workers to respond through supportive supervision, clinical mentoring and participatory action research steered by local district health teams.
