Using systematized tacit knowledge to prioritize implementation challenges in existing maternal health programs: implications for the post MDG era.

Abstract

Strategic priority setting implementation of strategies to reduce maternal mortality are key to the post Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 2015 agenda. This article highlights the feasibility the advantages of using a systematized tacit knowledge approach, using data from maternal health program personnel, to identify local challenges to implementing policies programs to inform the post MDG era. Communities of practice, conceived as groups of people sharing professional interests, experiences knowledge, were formed with diverse health personnel implementing maternal health programs in Mexico Nicaragua. Participants attended several workshops developed different online activities aiming to strengthen their capacities to acquire, analyze, adapt apply research results to systematize their experience knowledge of the actual implementation of these programs. Concept mapping, a general method designed to organize depict the ideas of a group on a particular topic, was used to manage, discuss systematize their tacit knowledge about implementation problems of the programs they work in. Using a special online concept mapping platform, participants prioritized implementation problems by sorting them in conceptual clusters rating their importance feasibility of solution. Two hundred thirty one participants from three communities of practice in each country registered on the online concept mapping platform 200 people satisfactorily completed the sorting rating activities. Participants further discussed these results to prioritize the implementation problems of maternal health programs. Our main finding was a great similarity between the Mexican the Nicaraguan general results highlighting the importance the feasibility of solution of implementation problems related to the quality of healthcare. The use of rigorously organized tacit knowledge of health personnel proved to be a feasible useful tool for prioritization to inform implementation priorities in the post MDG agenda.