December 2004

This 104-page compendium seeks to assist programme designers in selecting essential components, actions and appropriate indicators for interventions in maternal and newborn care. It intends to provide non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with a single source of information to: 1) determine recommended practices and standards of care at the household, community, and health care facility levels to address maternal and newborn care; and 2) identify which indicators are appropriate to use with the different interventions.

The compendium includes five interrelated tables that correspond to the temporal phases of a woman’s reproductive cycle: 1) Pre-Conception/ Inter-Conception; 2) Antenatal; 3) Labor and Delivery; 4) Postpartum Care; and 5) Newborn Care. Each table is divided into four levels that correspond to where (and to whom) most programmatic interventions and activities are focused: Household, Community, First-Level Care and Second-Level Care.

Once an overall framework for a program is selected and the objectives are identified, the compendium may be used in the following ways:

• To learn more about what are the recommended practices and standards of care for maternal and newborn health
• To help determine what components of the recommended practices and standards of care should be incorporated into the program design and into project activities
• To select appropriate indicators that relate to the standards (or develop their own after considering the indicators that are presented)
• To identify the key indicators
• To identify the most common data sources for constructing the indicators
• To learn more about technical interventions relating to maternal and newborn care
• To identify references and sources supporting evidence-based practices In each of the five tables, for each of the four levels of care, there is a set of interrelated

Hipnet listserv, February 4 2005.