Publications by authors named "Astrid Van Damme"

Problem: Despite increasing interest in Group Care worldwide, implementation is challenging.

Background: Group Care is an evidence-based perinatal care model including three core components: health assessment, interactive learning, and community building. It has several advantages for service users and providers compared to individual perinatal care.

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Background: By addressing physical and psychosocial needs, group care (GC) improves health-related behaviours, peer support, parent-provider interactions and may improve birth outcomes. Hence, global implementation of GC is encouraged. Context analyses prior to implementation are vital to elucidate which local factors may support or hinder implementation.

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Background: Suriname is a uppermiddle-income country with a relatively high prevalence of preventable pregnancy complications. Access to and usage of high-quality maternity care services are lacking. The implementation of group care (GC) may yield maternal and child health improvements.

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Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore how women are recruited for group antenatal care (GANC) in primary care organisations (PCOs), what elements influence the behaviour of the recruiter, and what strategies recruiters use to encourage women to participate.

Method: Using a qualitative research design, we conducted 10 in-depth interviews with GANC facilitators working in PCOs. Selected constructs of the domains of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research and the Theoretical Domains Framework helped to develop interview questions and raise awareness of important elements during interviews and thematic analyses.

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Introduction: Group Antenatal Care (GANC) is an alternative for traditional antenatal care. Despite the model is well accepted among participants and is associated with positive effects on pregnancy outcomes, recruitment of participants can be an ongoing challenge, depending on the structure and financing of the wider health system. This is especially the case for primary care organizations offering GANC, which depend on other health care providers to refer potential participants.

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Background: Group care (GC) improves the quality of maternity care, stimulates women's participation in their own care and facilitates growth of women's social support networks. There is an urgent need to identify and disseminate the best mechanisms for implementing GC in ways that are feasible, context appropriate and sustainable. This protocol presents the aims and methods of an innovative implementation research project entitled Group Care in the first 1000 days (GC_1000), which addresses this need.

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