Maternal and newborn health behaviors in rural Uttar Pradesh: Findings from learning phase baseline survey 2013

The Uttar Pradesh Community Mobilization Project (2011–16) aims to develop and scale up evidence-based interventions to improve reproductive, maternal, neonatal, and child health and nutrition health behaviors by an average of 10 percentage points among marginalized populations in Uttar Pradesh, India. The goal is to reduce neonatal mortality by improving maternal and child health behaviors through developing and scaling up a package of family health interventions and strengthening the management of Behavior Change Communication using self-help groups as the platform. The project is being carried out in two phases—a learning phase covering 10 blocks and a scale-up phase covering 100 additional blocks. It is being implemented by a consortium led by the Public Health Foundation of India (and including the Population Council), and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As part of the project’s monitoring, learning, and evaluation system, a baseline survey for ten learning phase blocks was planned to measure the project’s key maternal and newborn health indicators of currently married women aged 15–49 years who had delivered a baby during the last one year. This report contains findings from the 2013 Learning Phase Baseline Survey