Intervention co-design to reduce the impact of heat exposure on pregnant and postpartum women and newborns in Burkina Faso

Abstract

Interventions are needed to reduce the impact of heat on the health and wellbeing of women and newborns in Burkina Faso where seasonal temperatures can be extremely high. In this article, we share our experience and lessons learned from co-designing an intervention to improve maternal and neonatal health, about heat in a rural and an urban district of Burkina Faso. We performed community engagement and a series of workshops with 49 community members (health workers, women group representatives, youth leaders, religious leaders, traditional leader, and mothers-in-law) and 36 implementers, stakeholders and professionals (officials from the Ministry of Health, midwives and related health workers, meteorologists, and environmental health practitioners). Following the discussions and group reflections, emerging intervention priorities were ranked based on their perceived likelihood of success, cost effectiveness, implementation feasibility, and sustainability. The co-design workshops identified behaviour change interventions encompassing raising awareness of the effects of heat through targeted messages on adaptative behaviour to adopt. The effective operationalisation of these interventions was further achieved through co-planning involving health system actors in contact with women and local stakeholders with relevant expertise. We aimed to engage health professionals and community health workers to integrate heat and dehydration messages into their routine work with pregnant and postpartum women with the aim of changing behaviour through communication: educational group talks, interpersonal exchanges in the consultation room and broadcasts of information to the public who attend the clinic (video played on a television set in the waiting room). The co-design workshops were an opportunity to build capacity among facilitators and participants as well as to prioritize and develop interventions to address the impact of heat exposure-amplified by climate change-on pregnant and postpartum women, and on newborns.

Keywords: Burkina Faso; climate change; codesign; heat exposure; intervention; newborns; pregnant and postpartum women.

Figure 1.

Illustration of a woman breastfeeding her newborn baby in the shade of a shed.