CDC Foundation – Pregnancy Outcome and Death Surveillance in Humanitarian and Fragile Settings

The CDC Foundation has engaged Dimagi in a pilot of the Pregnancy Outcomes and Death Surveillance in Humanitarian and Fragile Settings (PODS) project. This pilot focuses on developing a model for better understanding the challenges to achieving good maternal and newborn health outcomes and using data for evidence-based decision making. 

The project aims to accelerate progress under global initiatives to end preventable stillbirth, maternal and neonatal mortality in humanitarian and fragile countries. Within this project, Pregnancy Outcome Surveillance (POS) and Maternal Perinatal Death Surveillance and Response (MPDSR) systems will be used to capture data on health outcomes and deaths for women and newborns.

In order to achieve these objectives, the CDC Foundation and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have engaged Dimagi to develop an integrated mobile health solution designed for mobile phone and tablet-based collection and reporting of community and facility-based pregnancy and mortality data in Burkina Faso and Chad. In addition, Dimagi will implement a version of its online learning and certification program for epidemiology institution in Cameroon such that they will be trained to build their own pregnancy and mortality data collection tools. The pilot of this program will support 50 users in each country, currently aiming for a total of 150 in the initial deployment.

This solution will not only help the CDC Foundation and CDC partners collect data and replace the paper form on the ground but also eventually use real-time accessible data for community health providers and decision-makers to provide action and to prevent a similar death in the future.