Participation, accountability and maternal deaths among communities living in northern Kenya

Citizen participation and social accountability are necessary for improving health outcomes including maternal health. Strategies to address maternal mortality include the three-delay model and social autopsy. The three-delay model focuses on barriers that contribute to maternal deaths at community and institutional level. Two of the delays focus on community level barriers while the third delay focuses on barriers from health providers. Social autopsy is a participatory process that allows citizens and health providers to review circumstances that result in a maternal death as a learning mechanism to prevent future deaths. This process of reflection and learning mobilises people to address barriers and prevent future deaths.

I want to find out how participation in social autopsy can influence citizen action to prevent maternal deaths. I will take an ethnographic approach and use observation and in-depth interviews to explore citizen reflection and the prevention of maternal deaths.

My findings will inform strategies to prevent maternal deaths.