Study on Female-Male Village Health Worker Pairs to Improve Womens Postnatal Care Visits in Sepone District, Lao PDR

What this Trial Is About

This research aims to evaluate how male-female pairs of Village Health VolunteersWorkers VHVWs affect womens attendance at a second postnatal care PNC visit in rural areas of Sepone, Lao PDR. The study compares villages where VHVWs work in pairs to those where they work individually, focusing on the postpartum care of women who have recently given birth. It is designed as a quasi-experimental cluster study conducted between July 2024 and October 2026. The study involves 37 selected villages from two districts. In 19 villages of Sepone district, female-male pairs of VHVWs will promote postpartum services, while in 18 control villages of Vilabuly district, VHVWs will operate individually without pairing. The intervention consists of behavioral promotion activities by these paired community health workers to encourage maternal and child health service use. Participants will be women aged 15 to 49 years who have given birth within six weeks to twelve months before the baseline and end-line surveys. Researchers will measure the uptake of the second postnatal care visit six weeks after delivery as the main outcome, along with the length of facility-based postpartum stay. The study includes double masking, and participants will be monitored through surveys assessing their use of postpartum services during the study period.

Can Village Health Volunteers/Workers Working As Male-Female Pairs Improve the Use of Postnatal Care Services in the Lao People's Democratic Republic