Characterization of Innovation to Fight Child Mortality: A Systematic Scoping Review

Abstract

Objectives: This study aims to summarize how child mortality-a Sustainable Development Goal stated by the United Nations-has been explicitly addressed in the context of innovations. Methods: A scoping review following the PRISMA-ScR Statement was performed analysing indexed and non-indexed literature. Results: Empirical and non-disruptive innovation in the context of process targeting under-five mortality rate was the main subset of literature included in this article. The increment of literature on innovation in the context of SDGs over the last years denotes its growing importance and even though innovation aiming to reduce child mortality is currently being done, a significant part of it is not published in indexed databases but as grey literature. Conclusion: Empirical, disruptive innovation under a structural approach and empirical, non-disruptive innovation under a project point of view are the main types of innovation addressed in the literature and would be of utmost potential to reduce child mortality rate. A systematic review of the methods used for the measures of evaluation of applied innovations, their quality and results would be of great importance in the future.

Keywords: child mortality; innovation; neonatal mortality rate; scoping review; sustainable development goal; under-five mortality rate.

FIGURE 1

Study selection flow diagram, based on The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews (Australia, 2021).

FIGURE 2

Number of publications per year and type of data source regarding retrieved documents. (A) Indexed and non-indexed literature; (B) Indexed literature; (C) Nonindexed literature (Portugal, 2021).