Evaluating a Large-Scale Community-Based Intervention to Improve Pregnancy and Newborn Health Among the Rural Poor in India.

Objectives. We evaluated the effectiveness of the Sure Start project, which was implemented in 7 districts of Uttar Pradesh, India, to improve maternal and newborn health. Methods.

Assessment of a tool for measuring non-profit advocacy efforts in India, Uganda and Yemen.

To improve maternal and child health, the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood (WRA) implemented an innovative policy advocacy project in India, Uganda and Yemen from 2009 to 2011. PATH assisted WRA in designing an approach to measure the short- and long-term results of WRA's advocacy efforts.Expert rating instruments have been widely used since 1970s to track country-level program efforts focusing on family planning, maternal and neonatal health, and HIV/AIDS.

Age-specific and sex-specific mortality in 187 countries, 1970-2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010.

Background: Estimation of the number and rate of deaths by age and sex is a key first stage for calculation of the burden of disease in order to constrain estimates of cause-specific mortality and to measure premature mortality in populations. We aimed to estimate life tables and annual numbers of deaths for 187 countries from 1970 to 2010.

Methods: We estimated trends in under-5 mortality rate (children aged 0-4 years) and probability of adult death (15-59 years) for each country with all available data.

National and subnational mortality effects of metabolic risk factors and smoking in Iran: a comparative risk assessment.

Background: Mortality from cardiovascular and other chronic diseases has increased in Iran. Our aim was to estimate the effects of smoking and high systolic blood pressure (SBP), fasting plasma glucose (FPG), total cholesterol (TC), and high body mass index (BMI) on mortality and life expectancy, nationally and subnationally, using representative data and comparable methods.

Methods: We used data from the Non-Communicable Disease Surveillance Survey to estimate means and standard deviations for the metabolic risk factors, nationally and by region.

Neonatal, postneonatal, childhood, and under-5 mortality for 187 countries, 1970-2010: a systematic analysis of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 4.

Background: Previous assessments have highlighted that less than a quarter of countries are on track to achieve Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG 4), which calls for a two-thirds reduction in mortality in children younger than 5 years between 1990 and 2015. In view of policy initiatives and investments made since 2000, it is important to see if there is acceleration towards the MDG 4 target. We assessed levels and trends in child mortality for 187 countries from 1970 to 2010.

Worldwide mortality in men and women aged 15-59 years from 1970 to 2010: a systematic analysis.

Background: Adult deaths are a crucial priority for global health. Causes of adult death are important components of Millennium Development Goals 5 and 6. However, adult mortality has received little policy attention, resources, or monitoring efforts.

Measuring under-five mortality: validation of new low-cost methods.

Background: There has been increasing interest in measuring under-five mortality as a health indicator and as a critical measure of human development. In countries with complete vital registration systems that capture all births and deaths, under-five mortality can be directly calculated. In the absence of a complete vital registration system, however, child mortality must be estimated using surveys that ask women to report the births and deaths of their children.

Measuring adult mortality using sibling survival: a new analytical method and new results for 44 countries, 1974-2006.

Background: For several decades, global public health efforts have focused on the development and application of disease control programs to improve child survival in developing populations. The need to reliably monitor the impact of such intervention programs in countries has led to significant advances in demographic methods and data sources, particularly with large-scale, cross-national survey programs such as the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Although no comparable effort has been undertaken for adult mortality, the availability of large datasets with information on adult survival from censuses and household surveys offers an important opportunity to dramatically improve our knowledge about levels and trends in adult mortality in countries without good vital registration.

What can we conclude from death registration? Improved methods for evaluating completeness.

Background: One of the fundamental building blocks for determining the burden of disease in populations is to reliably measure the level and pattern of mortality by age and sex. Where well-functioning registration systems exist, this task is relatively straightforward. Results from many civil registration systems, however, remain uncertain because of a lack of confidence in the completeness of death registration.