Community-Based Newborn Care (CBNC) is an Ethiopian national initiative launched in March 2013 as a means of bringing life-saving care to mothers and newborns at the community level within the Ethiopian health system. CBNC aims to improve newborn survival through the strengthening of Primary Health Care Units and the Health Extension Programme. The CBNC package includes the delivery of a parenteral antibiotics regime at the community level to improve sepsis-management. Find out more information about CBNC here.

The IDEAS project, based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, is collaborating with the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health to evaluate the CBNC programme. The evaluation framework includes a series of quantitative surveys and qualitative assessments conducted over five years. The evaluation is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the research is led by Dr Bilal Avan and Dr Della Berhanu.

Using both standard and innovative methods, this seminar will focus on how to assess the quality of care in initiatives that aim to improve newborn healthcare services, and is based on the key findings from the CBNC midterm evaluation.