Social networks powerful tools to help improve healthcare

Women in urban slums who viewed community health workers as part of their social support network are more likely to adopt healthy maternal and child healthcare practices, says a new icddr,b research, reports UNB.

It reveals that social networks are powerful tools to help improve the healthcare delivered to women and their babies.

In a new evaluation of BRAC's Manoshi programme established to deliver urban community based healthcare to mothers and their children in Dhaka, icddr,b's Dr Alayne Adams and colleagues found that women are more likely to adopt positive maternal and child health practices when healthcare delivery utilises the power of social networks.

Women who saw their community health workers as important members of their social network were more likely to deliver their baby with a trained birth attendant, to give their baby nutrient-rich colostrum and to use postnatal care, compared to women who did not have community health workers within their social network.

Dr Adams, a senior social scientist in the Centre for Equity and Health Systems, and her colleagues Herfina Nababan and S M Manzoor Ahmed Hanifi interviewed 993 women in five urban slums in Dhaka city who had given birth within the last three months, asking them about their social ties.

In contrast, women relying mostly on the support of mothers, mothers-in-law or friends were less likely to access postnatal care or give colostrum to their newborn.

"When Manoshi health workers become part of a woman's network, they provide expectant mothers with critical emotional, practical and informational support - connecting them with referral to maternity care, and supplying vital information on maternal and neonatal health best practices that is sometimes at odds with the traditional views and practices of friends and close family members like mother's and mother's in-law," says Dr Adams.