Strengthening postnatal care services including postpartum family planning in Kenya

The objectives of this study were to develop and introduce a strengthened postnatal care package into one hospital and four health centers in one district in Kenya, to document the feasibility, acceptability, and quality of care of the strengthened postnatal care, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the postnatal package on women’s reproductive health behaviors. The study was implemented jointly by the Population Council’s Frontiers in Reproductive Health (FRONTIERS) project and by Jhpiego’s ACCESS-FP project, both funded by USAID. A postnatal care–family planning orientation package for providers was developed that incorporated relevant maternal and newborn healthcare services in the postnatal period with a specific focus on postpartum family planning. The package developed and tested through this project proved to be acceptable to clients and providers and can be introduced fairly easily through a three-day orientation training and enhanced through supportive supervision. To raise the standard of care further, future use of this training and supervision package as a standard protocol for the Ministry of Health in Kenya or elsewhere should include a clinical skills component for maternal and neonatal complications