BOLDly Redefining High Quality Care During Labor and Delivery

By: Sarah Hodin, MPH, CD(DONA), LCCE, National Senior Manager of Maternal Newborn Health Programs, Steward Health Care

The International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics recently published a special supplement highlighting findings and lessons learned from implementing the World Health Organization’s Better Outcome in Labor Difficulty (BOLD) project in Nigeria and Uganda. In an effort to reduce stillbirths and perinatal deaths by improving quality care during labor and delivery, the BOLD project team developed two innovations:

1. Simplified, Effective, Labor Monitoring-to-Action (SELMA): An evidence-based, user-friendly tool to help providers make decisions about labor management.
2. Passport to Safer Birth: A model of care co-designed with women, health care providers and communities to promote respectful maternity care.

Each of the open access papers focuses on a specific aspect of the project’s implementation and discoveries.

Editorial

Turning local knowledge and experience into innovative tools for quality care during labor and childbirth: The BOLD project experience

Qualitative studies

• Defining quality of care during childbirth from the perspectives of Nigerian and Ugandan women: A qualitative study
• Healthcare providers’ perspectives on labor monitoring in Nigeria and Uganda: A qualitative study on challenges and opportunities
• The communication and emotional support needs to improve women’s experience of childbirth care in health facilities in Southwest Nigeria: A qualitative study
• Expectations and needs of Ugandan women for improved quality of childbirth care in health facilities: A qualitative study

Clinical articles

• Negotiating quality standards for effective delivery of labor and childbirth care in Nigeria and Uganda
• Using a service design model to develop the “Passport to Safer Birth” in Nigeria and Uganda
• A service concept and tools to improve maternal and newborn health in Nigeria and Uganda

Are you working on an innovation to improve the quality of maternity care in low-resource settings? We want to hear from you!

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Explore resources related to the quality of maternal health care.

Learn more about how the BOLD project was formed.

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