How to Mobilize Communities for Improved Maternal and Newborn Health

This "how to" guide contains instructions for carrying out a community mobilisation (CM) initiative to improve the health of pregnant women and newborns. The guide is intended for individuals who will work with communities as they mobilise to improve maternal and newborn health, but is also written to be useful for anyone who seeks to better understand the steps and resources inherent in engaging communities to organise, explore, plan for, act on, and evaluate collective action to achieve health and social change. It is a publication from the ACCESS Program and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The guide complements and builds upon an earlier ACCESS publication, Demystifying Community Mobilization, which presents evidence from peer reviewed literature of CM as a strategy for addressing high maternal and newborn mortality. This follow-on guide has two main parts: Chapter One is a general overview of maternal and newborn health; and Chapters Two through Seven take the reader step-by-step through the CM process, following the phases of the community action cycle. The Annex contains a series of 19 tools for carrying out various steps described in the guide.