habtamusetegn/Enhancing-Precision-in-Classification-of-Health-Facility-and-Home-Deliveries-in-East-Africa-

This study aims to improve the classification of health facility and home deliveries using advanced machine learning algorithms and examines factors influencing delivery location choice among women in East Africa. To accomplish the objective, a comparative analysis of twelve advanced machine learning algorithms and expermentations were undertaken. # Enhancing-Precision-in-Classification-of-Health-Facility-and-Home-Deliveries-in-East-Africa- Abstract Sub-Saharan Africa faces alarming rates of neonatal and maternal mortality due to limited access to skilled healthcare professionals and challenges associated with the place of delivery. This study aims to improve the classification of health facility and home deliveries using advanced machine learning algorithms and examines factors influencing delivery location choice among women in East Africa. The study focused on 86,009 women aged 15 to 49 in East Africa. A comparative analysis of twelve advanced machine learning algorithms was undertaken to accomplish the objective. Various feature selection techniques, data balancing techniques, and four different hyperparameter optimization methods were experimented with to enhance classification accuracy and model performance. The findings showed that the support vector machine (SVM) algorithm and CatBoost when optimized with Bayesian optimization tuning performed best in predicting the place of delivery, in which both of those algorithms scored an accuracy of 95%, AUC of 0.98, and insignificant difference between them in all comprehensive analysis of metrics performance such as accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, specificity, and AUC. Factors associated with facility-based deliveries were identified using association rule mining, including parental education levels, timing of initial ANC check-ups, wealth status, marital status, mobile phone ownership, religious affiliation, media accessibility, and birth order. In conclusion, the study recommends promoting facility-based deliveries among women of reproductive age. These include raising awareness about skilled birth attendance, promoting early and regular ANC visits, addressing financial barriers through targeted support programs, implementing culturally sensitive interventions, utilizing media campaigns and mobile health initiatives, and providing additional suppo …