Women's autonomy, neonatal, infant and under-five mortality in the Upper East Region of Ghana.

Child mortality remains a major health challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa. Child survival is greatly influenced by household circumstances and mother's healthcare choices. Notwithstanding tremendous investment in women empowerment in Ghana, there is limited empirical evidence on whether women's autonomy translates into better child mortality outcomes.

Is quality maternal healthcare all about successful childbirth? Views of mothers in the Wa Municipality, Ghana.

Introduction: In spite of the countless initiatives of the Ghana government to improve the quality of maternal healthcare, Upper West Region still records poor childbirth outcomes. This study, therefore, explored women's perception of the quality of maternal healthcare they receive in the Wa Municipality of the Upper West Region of Ghana.

Materials And Methods: This is a qualitative cross-sectional study of 62 women who accessed maternal healthcare in the Wa Municipality of Ghana.

Women's Health Decision-Making Autonomy and Skilled Birth Attendance in Ghana.

Delivering in health facility under the supervision of skilled birth attendant is an important way of mitigating impacts of delivery complications. Empirical evidence suggests that decision-making autonomy is aligned with holistic wellbeing especially in the aspect of maternal and child health. The objective of this paper was to examine the relationship between women's health decision-making autonomy and place of delivery in Ghana.

Out of the reach of children? Young people's health-seeking practices and agency in Africa's newly-emerging therapeutic landscapes.

Despite a dominant view within Western biomedicine that children and medicines should be kept apart, a growing literature suggests that children and adolescents often take active roles in health-seeking. Here, we consider young people's health-seeking practices in Ghana: a country with a rapidly-changing therapeutic landscape, characterised by the recent introduction of a National Health Insurance Scheme, mass advertising of medicines, and increased use of mobile phones. Qualitative and quantitative data are presented from eight field-sites in urban and rural Ghana, including 131 individual interviews, focus groups, plus a questionnaire survey of 1005 8-to-18-year-olds.

Influence of social connectedness, communication and monitoring on adolescent sexual activity in Ghana.

This paper examines connectedness to, communication with and monitoring of unmarried adolescents in Ghana by parents, other adults, friends and key social institutions and the roles these groups play with respect to adolescent sexual activity. The paper draws on 2004 nationally-representative survey data and qualitative evidence from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with adolescents in 2003. Adolescents show high levels of connectedness to family, adults, friends, school and religious groups.