Reaching the poor with health interventions: programme-incidence analysis of seven randomised trials of women's groups to reduce newborn mortality in Asia and Africa

BACKGROUND: Efforts to end preventable newborn deaths will fail if the poor are not reached with effective interventions. To understand what works to reach vulnerable groups, we describe and explain the uptake of a highly effective community-based newborn health intervention across social strata in Asia and Africa. METHODS: We conducted a secondary analysis of seven randomised trials of participatory women's groups to reduce newborn mortality in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Malawi. We analysed data on 70,574 pregnancies. Socioeconomic and sociodemographic differences in group attendance were tested using logistic regression. Qualitative data were collected at each trial site (225 focus groups, 20 interviews) to understand our results. RESULTS: Socioeconomic differences in women's group attendance were small, except for occasional lower attendance…