The centres research focus is developing and implementing effective interventions in maternal, newborn and child health care at primary and secondary levels of care.
- Ascertaining the prevalence of abnormal resistance indices determined by continuous wave Doppler (Umbiflow) performed in a low-risk population of pregnant women and prevent stillbirths. The initial study demonstrated that using the Umbiflow in low-risk pregnant women reduced the number of antenatal stillbirths by half. Follow-up studies have been conducted on infants whose mothers were assessed with Umbiflow.
- Designing and testing ways to train health care professionals in emergency obstetric care by adapting the ESMOE programme.
- Improve basic antenatal care by new strategies of providing novel referral systems
- Operational research on and evaluation of the implementation and scale-up of kangaroo mother care and other maternal and newborn health interventions at different health-system levels.
- To provide ongoing information on the quality of perinatal and child health care services, identify the missed opportunities in these services and provide evidence-based recommendations which if implemented would reduce perinatal and child deaths through clinical audit programmes; Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Audit System (MaMMAS), Perinatal Problem Identification System (PPIP) and Child Health Care Problem Identification Programme (Child PIP)
- Revise the national guidelines for managing the care of women in labour
- The Siyakhula study which assesses factors impacting fetal and infant immunity and growth in HIV- and antiretroviral-exposed uninfected children
- To improve the quality of obstetric care in midwife-led obstetric units as well as in their referral district hospitals, using a geographical catchment area approach within the health districts through CLEVER maternity care.
- Testing the new Intrapartum care model and the new World Health Organization labour monitoring tool: a feasibility study
- An Integrated Quality Improvement Approach to Improve Sexual, Reproductive, Maternal and Neonatal Health Outcomes in South Africa, Mphatlalatsane.
- Improving Paediatric HIV case-based surveillance at District level in South Africa