The Countdown consortium in collaboration with UN agencies (UNICEF, WHO, World Bank and UNFPA), has been tracking progress (or lack thereof) of life-saving interventions for Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (RMNCH) and Nutrition (RPMNCH+N) since 2005. WorldPop has worked with the Countdown consortium through Phases I and II and has joined the next Phase to lead geospatial data and analysis in Ghana.

Building on the strong networks developed in earlier Phases, in this project we will work with partners at the University of Ghana, Ghana Health Service, Ministry of Health, Ghana and the Ghana Global Financing Facility to strengthen the evidence generation for regular reviews of progress and performance of the RMNCAH+N programme. We will manage one of six Countdown Global Data and Analysis Centres (DACs) and also communicate regularly with GFF-World Bank, WHO and UNICEF.

The project’s main research design is secondary cross-sectional and geospatial analysis. A range of datasets will be considered for the studies, including routine health data from health facilities and geographic data on the location of health facilities. Also, data about characteristics of health facilities such as quality care surveys and health facility assessments will be included. The research also intends to use large survey datasets such as the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS). Spatial demographic dataset will be created and included in the analysis.

Equity analysis focusing on factors influencing health service users will adopt survey data such as the DHS and MICS. The equity analysis using survey data will focus on outcomes such as antenatal care, skilled birth, postnatal care and child routine immunisation. The outcomes will be stratified by rural/urban, wealth, education, religion, region, ethnicity and other important stratifiers available in the survey dataset.

Outputs will include:

• Reports and academic articles that feed into Ghana’s health development goals.
• Multi-country studies on geospatial inequalities in healthcare accessibility including child immunization services and essential surgery services for obstetric care.
• SDG related monitoring, analytical and spatial demographic tools, and data for estimating coverages team to support the Global CD2030 team.
• Knowledge translation capacity building activities with Ghana team including documentation and communication of results products (e.g., summary documents, policy briefs, fact sheets and dashboards).