While research has assessed the impact of health insurance on health care utilization, few studies have focused on the effects of health insurance on use of maternal health care. Analyzing nationally representative data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), this study estimates the impact of health insurance status on the use of maternal health services in three countries with relative...

BACKGROUND Among Millennium Development Goals, achieving the fifth goal (MDG-5) of reducing maternal mortality poses the greatest challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ethiopia has one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in the world with unacceptably low maternal health service utilization. The Government of Ethiopia introduced an innovative community-based intervention as a national strategy ...

To promote the utilization of maternal health services and reduce financial barriers, the Laos government introduced its "Free Maternal Health Services Policy" in 2012. This policy provides free maternal health services for pregnant women, which includes costs related to treatment, transportation, food fees, referral and an incentive for four antenatal care appointments. This study aims to asce...

conclusions limited levels of prenatal depressive and anxiety symptoms do not seem to be associated with neonatal outcomes. in clinical practice, pregnant women, who suffer from low levels of prenatal depressive and anxiety symptoms, may be reassured, in respect of the adverse outcomes of these mood symptoms on the neonate. results on the basis of bdi, 81.1% of the sample showed minimal, 15.4% ...

BACKGROUND Nepal has made significant progress against the Millennium Development Goals for maternal and child health over the past two decades. However, disparities in use of maternal health services persist along geographic, economic, and sociocultural lines. METHODS Trends and inequalities in the use of maternal health services in Nepal between 1994 and 2011 were examined using four Nepal ...

OBJECTIVES We addressed the question of whether use of adequate prenatal care differs between foreign-born and Italian mothers and estimated the extent to which unobservable characteristics bias results. SETTING This study is on primary care and especially on adequate access to prenatal healthcare services by immigrant mothers. PARTICIPANTS Approximately 37,000 mothers of both Italian and f...

BACKGROUND Although the Republic of Vanuatu has improved maternal indicators, more needs to be done to improve equity among the poorest in the use of reproductive health services to expedite the progress towards the Millennium Development Goal 5(MDG 5) target. While large developing country studies provide evidence of a rich-poor gap in reproductive health services utilization, not much is writ...

BACKGROUND Evidence about the best methods with which to accelerate progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals is urgently needed. We assessed the effect of performance-based payment of health-care providers (payment for performance; P4P) on use and quality of child and maternal care services in health-care facilities in Rwanda. METHODS 166 facilities were randomly assigned a...

A number of previous studies have found that prenatal participation in the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) improves birth outcomes, but only a few studies have provided cost-benefit analyses. The present study linked Medicaid and WIC data files to birth certificates for live births in North Carolina in 1988. Women who received Medicaid benefits and prena...

BACKGROUND Progress towards attaining the maternal mortality and maternal health targets set by Millennium Development Goal 5 has been slow in most African countries. Assessing antenatal care and institutional delivery service utilization and their determinants is an important step towards improving maternal health care services. METHODS Data were drawn from the longitudinal database of Kilit...