PhD research: Investigating the potential of integrating community governance arrangements in maternal health care service delivery in Uganda: opportunities, challenges and lessons for multi-level governance

Date
October 2022 to September 2027
Countries
Category
Keywords
community governance arrangements
multi-level governance
co-production
maternal health services
ethnography
Institutions
Kabale University (Uganda)
Research fields
Medicine and Health Sciences

Women giving birth at home has been practiced throughout human history. Communities had their own birthing arrangements. Modern multi-level governance practices mandate governments to provide health care services through partnerships and collaboration with communities and service users, but locally available maternity arrangements are excluded.

Drawing from the co-production literature, the research explores how maternal health care is co-produced in one of the rural settings in Uganda, and whether or not community arrangements can be integrated in the mainstream health care system. It adopts an ethnographic approach to gain in-depth insights into the realities of maternal health service delivery in a natural setting. This will enable the identification of different actors and their roles in maternal health service delivery, and the available opportunities to involve communities and service users who are experts of local knowledge for better governance of health services.

  • this study explores the potential contribution of community governance arrangements to support knowledge development for better governance of health services.