Care Groups I: An Innovative Community-Based Strategy for Improving Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Health in Resource-Constrained Settings

Authors: Henry Perry, Melanie Morrow, Sarah Borger, Jennifer Weiss, Mary DeCoster, Thomas Davis, Pieter Ernst

Care Groups use volunteers to motivate mothers to adopt key MCH behaviors. The volunteers meet as a group every 2-4 weeks with a paid facilitator to learn new health promotion messages. Key ingredients of the approach include: peer-to-peer health promotion, selection of volunteers by the mothers, a manageable workload for the volunteers (no more than 15 households per volunteer), frequent (at least monthly) contact between volunteers and mothers, and regular supervision of the volunteers.