Strong K
Konstantinou G
Agweyu A
Diaz T
Jackson D
Kim M
Kubota S
Leslie H
Lazzerini M
Marchant T
Munos M
Muzigaba M
Quach A
Sheffel A
Yaqub N, Jr
Life Stages Quality of Care Metrics Technical Working Group for Maternal Newborn Child
Adolescent Health
Ageing,
Glob Health Sci Pract. 2024;12
Using health service coverage cascades to measure effective coverage for maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health services on a global scale is premature and requires further research and validation to reach consensus.
Measuring the contact coverage of maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health (MNCAH) services overestimates the benefits of these services because the quality of care provided during a contact is not measured. Effective coverage measures the proportion of the population that received a service with sufficient quality to have a positive health outcome from the service. MNCAH services and interventions involve a series of complex interactions between patients and the health system that are best measured using health service coverage cascades that follow an individual through their care journey to identify where efficiency is lost. Current data limitations and gaps make measuring effective coverage using health service cascades challenging. Further investment in data collections and measurement methods is required so that the method can be used at both the facility and population levels. We argue that using these cascades for global monitoring for MNCAH is premature and make recommendations for how to scale up use of health service coverage cascades for global monitoring.
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