Research Reports

The RESPOND Project Study Series: Contributions to Global Knowledge

• Report No. 1
  Payments in the Public Sector for Reproductive Health Services in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus (PDF, 1.9MB) November 2010
  Informal payments for health care services that clients are entitled to receive for free are highly prevalent in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus (EE&C). This report reviews relevant literature on the financial cost to clients in this region and describes the results of a secondary analysis of data from the Demographic Health Surveys and Reproductive Health Surveys conducted in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, to examine how financial and nonfinancial factors may affect the provision of family planning and obstetric services.  
• Report No. 2
  Community Mobilization for Postabortion Care in Kenya: Baseline Evaluation Report (PDF, 2MB) November 2010 
  In Kenya, maternal health complications related to unsafe abortion and miscarriage were the fourth leading cause of morbidity among women in 2006. Postabortion care (PAC) is an effective intervention for reducing maternal morbidity and mortality. Yet barriers to accessing PAC services include lack of knowledge of sources of care, fear of stigma, and misperceptions among communities regarding PAC.
  
  In response to this need, the RESPOND Project designed an intervention package aimed at increasing awareness and use of PAC services and improving family planning, reproductive health, and maternal health outcomes. This report summarizes the key results emerging from a baseline data collection exercise carried out in 2010, to provide a benchmark against which the RESPOND intervention may be measured during an endline evaluation.
• Report No. 3
  Factors Affecting Acceptance of Vasectomy in Uttar Pradesh: Insights from Community-Based, Participatory Qualitative Research (PDF, 2.5MB) May 2010 
  This report details the results of a participatory ethnographic evaluation research (PEER) study that was commissioned to understand the reasons for the low prevalence of vasectomy in Uttar Pradesh and to contribute to developing an approach for increasing demand for the procedure.

• Community-Based Distribution of Misoprostol for the Prevention of Postpartum Hemorrhage: Evaluation of a Pilot Intervention in Tangail District, Bangladesh 
  (PDF, 2.4MB)
  Mayer Hashi Project, 2010
  The leading causes of maternal mortality are hemorrhage, eclampsia, abortion, injuries, sepsis, and obstructed labor. Deaths related to postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) present a major challenge to health systems, particularly in rural areas of Bangladesh, where infrastructure is poor and health facilities often lack skilled staff, drugs, and equipment. Misoprostol is a proven uterotonic drug that is increasingly used in clinical and home delivery settings to prevent and manage PPH. 
  In 2008, the Mayer Hashi/RESPOND Project implemented a pilot project in the Tangail District of Bangladesh to determine the effectiveness of using government and nongovernmental field workers at the community level to distribute misoprostol tablets and ensure that women take the drug immediately postpartum. This evaluation report discusses the process, approaches, and strategies followed in the implementation of the pilot project and uses a review of relevant project documents and activity reports, as well as interviews and focus group discussions with clients, service providers, supervisors, and program managers. The overall goal of the evaluation was to assess the effectiveness of the community-based misoprostol intervention program strategies and to gather lessons learned and provide recommendations for the national scale-up.
   
• Synchronizing Gender Strategies - A Cooperative Model for Improving Reproductive Health and Transforming Gender Relations (PDF, 524KB)
  September 2010
  This paper explores gender integration approaches to sexual and reproductive health programs and policies to demonstrate why it is important to promote gender equality from a relational/harmonized perspective in sexual and reproductive health. It "takes gender transformation to the next step, to what we have communally termed ‘gender synchronization.' By gender synchronization the authors mean working with men and women, boys and girls, in an intentional and mutually reinforcing way that challenges gender norms, catalyzes the achievement of gender equality, and improves health."
  
  The paper describes the opportunities missed by the benefits and constraints of approaches to health development that work with women or men alone in a siloed manner. Further, it illustrates what separate but aligned programs and policies for both women and men and couple approaches look like; and, describes the value added from addressing both men and women from a relational perspective in programs and policies that improve health by challenging gender inequalities. This product was developed by the RESPOND Project at EngenderHealth and the BRIDGE Project, at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), in consultation with the Interagency Gender Working Group (IGWG) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).