Maternal and child health handbook to improve continuum of maternal and child care in rural Bangladesh: Findings of a cluster randomized controlled trial

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of maternal and child health handbook (MCH) enhanced by mobile tools and to generate evidence informing the adoption of the program in Bangladesh. A cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) has been implemented in Lohagora of Narail District and Dhamrai of Dhaka District. Unions of the study settings were randomly allocated in either one of three groups: (1) Intervention 1 using both mobile platform and MCH, (2) Intervention 2 using MCH alone, or (3) the Control. A total of 3,002 participants were recruited. The interventions were designed to promote two-way communications between pregnant women/their families and community health workers by an empowering approach. A total of 3,002 pregnant women were recruited. As the results, the interventions both significantly improved the utilization of CoC, although the overall proportion of CoC was relevantly low: 2.79% in the Control (95% CI: 1.37–3.54%), 6.16% in Intervention 2 (95% CI: 4.67–7.86%), and 7.89% in Intervention 1 (95% CI: 6.29–9.90%). Neonatal mortality rate with and without CoC was 5.43 per 1,000 (95% CI: 3.63–9.57 per 1,000) and 34.8 per 1,000 (95% CI: 24.3–45.4 per 1,000), respectively. Our study indicated the effectiveness of the interventions by leveraging MCH and a mobile platform to promote uptake of CoC throughout prepartum, intrapartum and postpartum/neonatal periods, potentially bringing long-lasting benefits to mothers and their offspring. The explicit approach is expected to guide policy makers to adopt MCH interventions in primary healthcare strengthening at the community level. Trial registration: UMIN000025628 Registered June 13, 2016.