Risk Factors During Pregnancy and Early Childhood in Rural West Bengal, India: A Feasibility Study Implemented via Train
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Risk Factors During Pregnancy and Early Childhood in Rural West Bengal, India: A Feasibility Study Implemented via Trained Community Health Workers Using Mobile Data Collection Devices Abram L. Wagner1 · Lu Xia2 · Priyamvada Pandey3 · Sandip Datta4 · Sharmila Chattopadhyay3 · Tanusree Mazumder4 · Sujay Santra4 · Uddip Nandi4 · Joyojeet Pal5 · Sucheta Joshi6 · Bhramar Mukherjee1,2
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Objectives This study measures the prevalence of risk factors among pregnant women and young children aged 12–24 months in a rural community in West Bengal, India. Methods Community health workers (CHWs) enrolled women and children into this 2015 cross-sectional study. Pregnant women were evaluated for underweight, anemia, and abnormal blood pressure. Children were evaluated for underweight, abnormal head and upper arm circumferences, and low scores from the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ). Data were collected on smartphones and tablets or by paper. Results More than half of the 279 women (59.9%) had a risk factor during pregnancy: 48.7% were anemic, 35.1% had low blood pressure, and 7.5% were underweight. Among the 366 children, 59.3% had a risk factor, including 24.0% with low ASQ scores and 49.7% who had abnormal anthropometric measures. Conclusions for Practice Vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women and young children, needed a greater connection to doctors in this rural community. This study demonstrated the feasibility of CHWs to listen to health concerns and connect underserved populations with health care services. Keywords Access to health care · Community health workers · Development · Pregnancy · Smartphones, India
Significance What is already known on this subject? Vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women and young children, have difficulty accessing regular care in remote, rural regions of the world. Community health workers can serve as a bridge between these populations and healthcare facilities. What this study adds? Community health workers can be trained to collect health data, including anthropometric information, on mobile devices, which can automate screening of high risk conditions among pregnant women and intellectual and physical disabilities among young children. Abram L. Wagner and Lu Xia have contributed equally to this work. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-018-2509-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Abram L. Wagner [email protected]
This process can efficiently link pregnant women and young children with high-risk health conditions to health care facilities.
Introduction Pregnant women and young children require regular access to high-quality healthcare (World Health Organization 2005). An important goal of pediatrics and obstetrics programs is to detect and resolve health problems, including physical and cognitive development delays and complications during pregnancy (World Health Organization and Wor
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