June 11. II. Action Plan

My role as a World Vision Global Health Fellow is to work with Sierra Leone National Office (NO) team to evaluate Access to Infant and Maternal Health (AIM-Health) as well as monitor NO team by analyzing Lives Saved Tool (LiST). World Vision focuses on improving women and children’s health with a strong faith toward Jesus Christ, and AIM-Heath has launched for the reduction of under-five and maternal mortality in five African countries, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. There are four fellows from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and my colleagues will go to Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania soon enough. This four-year program is funded by an Irish Aid Grant from World Vision Ireland, and evidence-based and cost-effective interventions for pregnant women (7 core interventions) and children (11 core interventions) will be implemented in these five African countries, so called 7-11 Strategy.

I have prepared to begin this role since last 4^th term; I took Modeling Change in Maternal, Neonatal and Child Mortality class to understand how to use and analyze LiST. We can ask this simple question to ourselves, “What kinds of intervention is more effective to save more lives? How many deaths would be averted thanks to a particular intervention? How much coverage should be projected until 2020?” LiST is a projection-modeling tool that estimates the impact of 36 interventions to save maternal and child lives. Of course, we do not know what will happen exactly in the future. However, at least, we can predict and decide the most effective intervention to reduce stunting, under-5 mortality rate, neonatal mortality rate, and maternal mortality ratio, stillbirth rates, and deaths. LiST will make 7-11 Strategy more realistic and viable to fulfill our goals by identifying the best interventions for Nutrition, HIV/AIDS, Infectious disease, and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).

I made a draft of action plan from the beginning to September. I thought literature reviewing should be going on until the project to understand perfectly about LiST, World Vision’s Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition (MCHN), Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), World Vision’s Global Health Research, Design, Monitoring and Evaluation (RDME), and policies. I will have to find out the most feasible scale-up scenarios from the LiST’s 36 interventions. There will be a data collection and entry from the fieldwork in Bonthe District, and modeling and analyzing to conclude our outcome and present it to staff. I am excited to use LiST for a real situation in Sierra Leone, but on the one hand, I felt some pressure that I have to be a LiST expert to support National Team. Anyhow, I will enjoy my work. Michael Balmoh will attend LiST workshop in Kenya next week, and then, he and I will put out head together to find a solution for Sierra Leone’s high neonatal/maternal mortality.