Scenarios in Women's, Newborns', Children's, and Adolescents' Health in the Americas in the Context of COVID-19

DURÁN, PABLO; FIRESTEIN, LAUREN; JONES, DANIEL; ARIZA, LUCÍA; ALONSO, JUAN PEDRO

2021-11-01/2022-03-31

1-156

Social

Salud humana

The general objective of the study is to understand, from the perspective of key actors, challenges to the continuity of care and access to health services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic; the strategies that have been used to mitigate the indirect impacts of the pandemic on health systems and services and their response capacity; and preparations and strategies for after the pandemic?in all cases in relation to the health of women, newborns, children, and adolescents in five of the Region?s countries. The study?s specific objectives are: 1. To describe and analyze perceptions in the aforementioned groups in five of the Region?s countries regarding the indirect impacts on access to health services and challenges to the continuity of care as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. 2. To describe and analyze the strategies that have been used to mitigate these impacts and address these challenges in the context of health services for these groups in five of the Region?s countries. 3. To describe and analyze preparations and strategies regarding post-pandemic health services for these groups in five of the Region?s countries. Methodology Design A rapid appraisal was conducted of the challenges and responses to continuity of care and access to health services for women, newborns, children, and adolescents in countries of the Region of the Americas in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic period (28). The study was designed following a qualitative methodology (29) that triangulates the analysis of secondary sources and semi-structured interviews with key informants. Rapid assessments were used for data collection focused on situation diagnoses in short timeframes (29?31). With this approach, we sought to understand how the participating countries faced challenges to continuity of care and access to health services in relation to these groups, given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; the strategies they used to mitigate impacts and address challenges?in order to document the lessons learned during this process; and their preparations for a post-pandemic scenario. The study was carried out in various stages. The first consisted of a review of documents focused on summarizing the policies that the selected countries used to reorganize health services (regional recommendations and official country documents, among other sources). Then, first-hand information was collected through semi-structured interviews with key informants in each participating country. This strategy allowed for the collection of complementary data and provided different perspectives on the issues to be explored.