Quality Improvement for Maternal and Newborn Health (QI4MNH) update
Facilitating collaboration to drive improvement
QI4MNH is an ARPAN initiative designed to strengthen facility-based quality improvement (QI) for maternal and newborn health. The program brings together teams of maternity care providers from hospitals in Fiji, India, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Samoa to apply evidence-based QI approaches, identify priority quality-of-care challenges, and design contextually appropriate solutions that are feasible and sustainable within local health system settings.
In February 2026, Dr Sarah Bar-Zeev, Dr Fiona Bruinsma and Rodney Stewart from ARPAN and Dr Veronica Pingray (WHO), convened teams from the participating countries for a one‑week workshop in Bangkok, Thailand. Each country team consisted of three participants and one team mentor.
During the workshop, teams worked closely with peers, country team mentors, and facilitators to:
- Identify priority maternal and newborn health quality-of-care challenges
- Design QI projects using the WHO Toolkit for implementation of intrapartum and immediate postnatal care recommendations
- Develop project implementation, monitoring, and evaluation plans, including a detailed workplan and budget
The level of engagement and enthusiasm throughout the week was outstanding. Despite differences in country context, many teams identified similar challenges, reinforcing the value of shared learning and collaboration. Each team returned home with a fully developed QI project ready for implementation, and we look forward to sharing progress updates in future newsletters.
Participants highly valued the opportunity to strengthen their skills, build collaborative networks. Feedback on the workshop was overwhelmingly positive.
