Life-saving lullabies: Song as a Frugal and Sustainable Tool for Reducing Maternal and Infant Mortality in Zambia

Activity: Talk or presentation types › Oral presentation

Description

The conference theme is Driving Change, and will address global issues of stillbirth, neonatal death, SIDS, and Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (SUDI). The aim is to showcase strategies from across the world to effectively address the burden of stillbirth, neonatal death, SIDS and SUDI across high, middle and low-income countries. The program will include outstanding plenary and parallel sessions providing plenty of opportunity for discussion, shared learning, and knowledge transfer from experts in the field including parents, researchers and policy makers. The program will also incorporate the 2021 Australian Stillbirth Forum as an virtual event 11th November 2021. This event will bring together parents, policy makers, clinicians and researchers to review the progress in addressing stillbirth through the recently launched National Stillbirth Action and Implementation Plan.

Presentation:
Background: Maternal and prenatal deaths are a declared a Public Health emergency in Zambia. This project, funded by a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council urgency grant, aims to utilise newly made lullabies as a zero-cost, scalable, culturally acceptable intervention to reduce adolescent maternal and infant mortality.
Methods: A social design led approach combines ethnographic and design methodologies to increase our understanding of complex human problems and where creative tools are used to give voice to marginalised and vulnerable people. The principles of social design can be defined as;
large-scale societal challenges, interdisciplinary and design for social good rather than commercial gain. The social design relation is achieved in embedding the project within the existing work of community MCH volunteers.
Results: Early results highlight the use of lullabies has added a motivating factor to both the volunteers and adolescent mothers and key maternal and child health (MCH) messages are being shared. At the same time, the lullabies are adding greater value to the process of sensitizing the
community to MCH care. Conclusions: Lullabies offer a zero-cost approach to MCH issues in resource constrained environments. Community and professional buy-in is achieved in collaborating with local MCH volunteers and because lullabies are affordable, accessible, culturally acceptable, context specific and scalable.
Period11 Nov 2021 → 13 Nov 2021
Event titleISA/ISPID 2021 digital conference: Driving change in stillbirth, SIDS, and infant death
Event typeConference
LocationBribane, Australia, QueenslandShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

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