Effectiveness of Checklist based Box system Interventions (CBBSI) versus routine care on improving utilization of Maternal Health Service in North West, Ethiopia: Study protocol for a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract Background - Maternal mortality is still high in Ethiopia. Antenatal care, use of skilled delivery and postnatal care are key maternal health care services that can significantly reduce maternal mortality. However, in low and middle income countries including Ethiopia, utilization of these key services are not enough to deliver the recommended preventive, promotive and curative services. The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of checklist based box system interventions on improving maternal health service utilization. Methods - A community level cluster-randomized controlled trial will be conducted to compare the effectiveness of checklist based box system interventions over the routine standard of care. The intervention will use health extension program and provided by health extension workers and midwives, using a special type of health education scheduling and service utilization monitoring boxes, placed at health posts and health centers respectively. For this, 1,200 pregnant mothers, below 16 weeks of gestation, will be recruited from 30 clusters. Suspected pregnant mothers will be identified through a community survey and linked to the nearby health center. In a two weeks base, review of dropouts will be conducted at each intervention health center. Then intervention health posts (supervised by intervention health center) will be communicated for each dropout. Then, health extension workers will provide health education, using a person-centered manual prepared for this purpose. Data will be collected using ODK-Collect and analyzed using STATA version 13.0. Data will be analyzed by intention to treat analysis. Risk ration will be computed at cluster level and the summary will be compared using t-test. Outcomes between intervention and control groups will be compared with random effects logistic regression models. Discussion - The authors of this study expect that, the study will generate evidence on the effectiveness of checklist based box system interventions on improving utilization of maternal health care service, that are strong enough to inform policies in the country.