A multi-faceted intervention including antenatal corticosteroids to reduce neonatal mortality associated with preterm birth: a case study from the Guatemalan Western Highlands.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The Global Network for Women's and Children's Health Research undertook a cluster-randomized trial to assess the impact of a multi-faceted intervention to identify women at high-risk of preterm birth at all levels of care, to administer corticosteroids to women and refer for facility delivery compared with standard care. Of the seven sites that participated in the ACT trial, only two sites had statistically significant reductions in the neonatal mortality among the target group of <5th percentile infants, and of the two, Guatemala's improvement in neonatal mortality was by far the largest.

Methods

We used data available from the ACT trial as well as pretrial data in an attempt to understand why neonatal mortality may have decreased in the intervention clusters in

SUBMITTER: Garces A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4877983 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature