With colleagues from UC Berkeley, Dilys Walker, MD, is leading work in collaboration with USAID and the World Health Organization on the Networks of Care (NOC) approach to maternal newborn health (MNH) and quality improvement. The work aims to update the existing NOC framework and identify candidate tools and measures for relational coordination. The main objective of this effort is to drive innovation for strategies to improve teamwork and implementation research to evaluate interventions designed to strengthen relational coordination in NOC for MNH and promote quality improvement.

Phase I

Aimed to clarify the relational aspects of NOC to inform a revised NOC framework.

The revised framework has three main elements: 1) Structural (as defined in the WHO health systems framework), 2) Relational and 3) Organizational.

Phase II

Reviewed available measures for teamwork and relational coordination across disciplines, including health, aviation, military, and business, to identify priority tools and measures for assessing relational aspects of Networks of Care. UC focused on validated tools that integrate existing measures for relational components such as teamwork, leadership, supervision, communication, mutual support, and psychological safety that could be applied in LMIC. Our main objective was to generate a list of prioritized tools identifying those best suited for NOCs in LMIC. The result is a list of 12 high-priority tools ready for the next step, piloting in LMIC NOC settings.

Photo credit: Matthew Giloolley