FMCH (www.fmch-india.org) works on maternal health and malnutrition. Their vision is a world of healthy mothers and thriving children – where poor nutrition does not come in the way of mothers and children reaching their full potential.
They understand that malnutrition is a complex issue, thus take a systems approach to their work. They work in tandem with the government services (Anganwadi, ASHA, ANM), the family and their influencers (mothers, fathers, and other stakeholders), and community leaders to bring about behavior change around nutrition and health leading to better maternal health and lowering malnutrition rates. Counselling the stakeholders, data collection and usage is central to their work.
At present they are implementing programmes in under-resourced communities in Mumbai and Bengaluru. Through the direct intervention programmes FMCH has empowered over 100,000 families to raise healthy children, improved birth weights to 2.7kgs, increased the breastfeeding rate (up to 70% increase in some of our interventions; 25 PP higher than the national average), prevented children from going into stunting, wasting and underweight and moved children who are malnourished to regain a state of better health. They have over 10 partners across India. The organization's extended reach as of today is over 5,00,000 people in Maharashtra. Here is a Youtube video that talks about their work and they post their updates on Facebook here.
Creating a Scalable Mother & Child program by Digital Transformation of the Field Workers Operations
FMCH programs focus on in-depth engagement with pregnant women and mothers of new-born and young children to reduce infant mortality, improve maternal health and nutrition of mother and child.
There was a need to support the field worker in providing timely high-quality counselling, ensuring consistency and adherence to clinical protocols as the organization scales and adds more partners across India.
In addition, there was a need to collect, track, analyze data and keep track of high-risk cases which need special and timely attention.
We developed the NuTree platform, a comprehensive scheduling, counselling and decision tree solution to support the frontline worker and achieve the above objective.
NuTree has been designed to provide multilingual support to enable easier adoption by field workers.
- Field workers supporting maternal and child health face challenges in delivering timely information and maintaining protocol adherence during interactions with women at various pregnancy stages.
- NuTree app offers structured counselling support through customizable workflows and decision trees, tailoring questions based on pregnancy stage and child age.
- A distinct flow is available for counselling high-risk SAM/MAM cases
- The app ensures consistent protocol adherence by guiding field workers in asking the right questions and recording visit data.
- Each field officer supports around 200 families, facing challenges in efficient daily visit planning due to variables like high-risk cases and home distances.
- Nutree’s scheduling feature prioritizes mothers for visits based on factors such as last visit date and mother/child condition, including high-risk or SAM/MAM cases, aiding officers in daily planning.
- Field officers can cancel and specify reasons for the missed visits.
- This streamlined scheduling process has enhanced field officer productivity, reduced operating costs and increased family reached, by threefold with a 20% decrease in missed visits.
- Children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) require specialized attention and more frequent visits, meriting a distinct decision tree protocol and
- NuTree's SAM/MAM protocol helps the field officers classify children based on malnutrition severity, prioritize visits, cancel or reschedule visits, and specify reasons for missed visits.
- The protocol has optimized care, enabling timely interventions; last year, FMCH improved 77% of SAM/MAM children to healthy status.
- Field officers conduct Pregnancy Club (PC) sessions for educating mothers on pregnancy expectations and Nutrition Course (NC) sessions on optimal eating and feeding practices during the first 1000 days.
- Evaluating these programs impact on community nutritional milestones was challenging.
- NuTree's PC/NC feature equips officers with tools for session organization, content dissemination, and knowledge survey administration.
- The feature enhances program monitoring and evaluation, leading to more effective nutrition interventions and improved community health outcomes.
- Implementation of NuTree app has ensured higher quality of interventions, with fewer instances of missing key questions, paving the way for a plug-and-play adoption model.
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This results in improved program outcomes
- Successful transition of 77% of SAM/MAM children to a healthy state
- Threefold increase in the number of families reached
- Reduction in missed visits for high-risk mothers from 58% to 37%
- Significant improvements in Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices.