This paper assesses the impact of a mobile health (mHealth) project on uptake of
home-based care for newborn and child health, and investigates the extent to
which uptake of home-based care resulted in lessened pressure on health facilities
for conditions that can be handled at the household level. It uses mixed methods
consisting of cross-sectional household surveys data from a quasi-experimental
pre-test post-test design as well as qualitative data. The results show a large,
positive effect of the project on the aggregate home-based care for child health,
and a sharp, negative impact on facility-based care seeking for fever among
children whose mothers/caretakers used the services offered by the intervention.
Reasons for using the services mainly relate to the potential of avoiding
unnecessary trips to the health facility for care that could be provided at home.
The project provides insights on mHealth and community-based programming to
improve newborn and child health care delivery.