Bio

Sam is a PhD student with the Humanitarian Health Research Initiative at RSPH. He completed a medical degree and Master of Public Health before training as a public health physician with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Prior to starting his PhD, Sam worked at state health departments in Australia and with the World Health Organization and Doctors without Borders (MSF) in Sierra Leone, Turkey, Uganda and Afghanistan.

About

MSF-OCA (Operational Centre Amsterdam) is an independent medical humanitarian organisation that supported over half a million births in 27 countries covering a range of humanitarian crises between 2010-2019. Maternal morbidity and mortality remain unacceptably high in many countries where MSF work, and improving this is a priority area in the organization’s latest strategic plan. A crucial way of reducing maternal morbidity and mortality is through a package of interventions known as basic emergency obstetric and newborn care (BEmONC). However, providing these services effectively in complex humanitarian crises continues to pose a significant challenge to MSF and other organizations and there is an evidence gap of how best to do this.

This PhD aims to provide insight into how to most effectively tailor BEmONC services in a range of humanitarian crises. MSF-OCA has implemented many different types of maternal health projects across a range of humanitarian crises over many years. The first part of this PhD is a retrospective analysis of routinely collected program data from all MSF-OCA maternal health projects between 2010-2019.

Our aim is to use the unique experience generated from these projects to determine what factors are associated with maternal health service uptake, quality and outcomes.  Ecological analyses will consider the effect of contextual determinants on these outcomes. Results from this analysis will identify standout/outlier projects for subsequent in-depth analysis using disaggregated data. Subsequent work in this PhD will focus on identifying and, where possible, implementing and evaluating potential interventions to improve maternal health outcomes in humanitarian crises.