Salud Mesoamérica Initiative publications

We assess the impact of SMI on the staffing and availability of equipment and supplies for delivery care, the proportion of institutional deliveries, and the proportion of women who choose a facility other than the one closest to their locality of residence for delivery.

Our objective was to assess the impact of the Salud Mesoamérica Initiative on neonatal asphyxia care in health centers and hospitals in the region.

Haemorrhage remains the leading cause of maternal mortality in Central America. The Salud Mesoamérica Initiative aims to reduce such mortality via performance indicators. Our objective was to assess the availability and administration of oxytocin, before and after applying Salud Mesoamérica Initiative interventions in the poorest health facilities across Central America.

Multidimensional care for pre‐eclampsia management increased across all facility types, countries, and severity of disease. The Salud Mesoamérica Initiative is a promising model for achieving such quality of care interventions in the era of universal health coverage.

Measuring quality of care in low- and middle- income settings is an ongoing challenge. For these settings, the authors offer indicators to measure maternal, neonatal and child care that are standardized, replicable and comparable.

Antenatal care (ANC) is a means to identify high-risk pregnancies and educate women so that they might experience a healthier delivery and outcome. The present analysis examines whether ANC uptake is associated with other maternal and child health behaviors in poor mothers in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Mexico (Chiapas).

The Salud Mesoamérica Initiative is a public-private partnership aimed at reducing maternal and child morbidity and mortality for the poorest populations in Central America and the southernmost state of Mexico.

Neonatal sepsis is a leading cause of mortality among children under 5 in Latin America. This study examines the delivery of timely and appropriate antibiotics for neonatal sepsis among facilities participating in the Salud Mesoamérica Initiative project. 

Results-based aid (RBA) is increasingly used to incentivize action in health. In Mesoamerica, the region consisting of southern Mexico and Central America, the RBA project known as the Salud Mesoamérica Initiative (SMI) was designed to target disparities in maternal and child health, focusing on the poorest 20% of the population across the region.

This study assessed predictors of HIV screening to propose health system strategies useful to meeting the World Health Organization’s recommendations on HIV screening through antenatal care (ANC) services. The study found that, of sampled women of reproductive from the poorest Mesoamerican areas, an average of 40.7% of women were screened for HIV during there last pregnancy through ANC. Authors also identified that the probability of HIV screening increased with education, household expenditure, the number of ANC visits, and the type of health care attendant of ANC visits.

The Salud Mesoamérica Initiative (SMI) is a three-operation strategy, and is a pioneer in the world of results-based aid (RBA) in terms of the success it has achieved in improving health system inputs following its initial operation. We investigated the influential aspects of SMI that could have contributed to its effectiveness in improving health systems, with the aim of providing international donors, bilateral organizations, philanthropies, and recipient countries with new perspectives that can help increase the effectiveness of future assistance for health, specifically in the arena of RBA.

In the poorest regions of Chiapas, Mexico, 50.2% of women in need of contraceptives do not use any modern method. A qualitative study was needed to design effective and culturally appropriate interventions.

Professional skilled care has shown to be one of the most promising strategies to reduce maternal mortality, and in-facility deliveries are a cost-effective way to ensure safe births. We examined the characteristics of women who had a delivery in a health facility and determinants of the decision to bypass a closer facility and travel to a distant one.

The purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with contraceptive use among women in need living in the poorest areas in five Mesoamerican countries: Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and State of Chiapas (Mexico).

We applied the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction to analyze factors associated with risky sexual behaviors for adolescent students living in the poorest segments in Costa Rica.