Sioson, Lourem D. <br/><br/>
Maternal health care initiatives to improve the maternal helath status in the municipality of Shariff Aguak / 
Lourem D. Sioson. 
 - v, 100 leaves : color illustrations 
<br/><br/>
<br/><br/>Graduate School of Public and Development Management 
<br/><br/> The Philippines is still lagging behind in reducing maternal mortality with baseline at 209 per 100,000 livebirths in 1990. The national data shows that the maternal mortality rate was 67 per 100,000 livebirths in 2011 and decreased to 60 in 2012. In the municipality of Shariff Aguak, there was no reported maternal death since 2010. There is low facility based delivery, low antenatal care visits, and low skilled birth attendance in the municipality of Shariff Aguak. This paper aimed to improve the maternal health status in the Municipality of Shariff Aguak through the determination of the factors that contribute to poor maternal health status, formulation and implementation of strategies based on the identified factors, and creation of a list of recommendations that can be made to sustain the implementation.  This study utilized a qualitative descriptive design of research. Focused group discussions, key informant interview and participants observation were utilized to investigate on the factors that contribute to poor maternal health status. The identified factors were analyzed using the problem tree. Meanwhile, Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats analysis was used to formulate and prioritized the strategies to be implemented. Next, a list of recommendations such as policy instrument was presented to sustain the implementation of the project.  After the implementation of the combined strategies, termed as Maternal Health Care Initiative, there was a notifiable improvement in maternal health status of Shariff Aguak, as indicated by an increase of 14% in antenatal care, 13% in skilled birth attendance and 1% in facility based delivery as shown in the comparison of maternal health indicators of the same period from 2013 to 2014. 
<br/><br/><label>Subjects--Topical Terms: </label><br/>Maternal health services--Philippines.<br/>Public health--Philippines.<br/>Healthstatus.