Author Spotlight

Dr. Anna Grace Auma is a Senior Lecturer and Dean at the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at Lira University in Uganda. She has a Master's Degree in Nursing- Midwifery and Women’s Health and conducts research in the area of women’s health and family planning.

Her most recent research investigates  the knowledge and perceptions of vasectomy among men in Otuke District, a rural district in northern Uganda.  Although vasectomy is a safe and effective long-term contraceptive option for men, it has remained underutilized in this region. Dr. Auma’s research surveyed men aged 18-65 to capture a broad age range of perceptions on vasectomy. Her team found that limited understanding of the procedure, concerns about potential side effects, and societal attitudes towards vasectomy may hinder widespread acceptance and utilization of the procedure as a family planning method. This knowledge gap poses a challenge to the successful implementation of family planning programs in rural northern Uganda and may impact the overall health and socio-economic well-being of local families.

Dr. Auma hopes that these findings will not only clear up misconceptions about vasectomy, but also inform future messaging and education for men and their communities, emphasizing the benefits of shared family planning decisions. She would also like to see this research contribute to the development of more advanced methods of contraception specifically for men.

 Dr. Auma shared that the PREPSS service has been of great help in shaping her team’s  manuscript to a publishable paper. In particular, PREPSS provided insights from multiple disciplines that helped her team clarify the paper for diverse readers. 

Dr. Auma's paper "Knowledge and Perceptions of men towards Vasectomy among men of reproductive age in Otuke District" was supported by PREPSS and is currently under submission at a journal for publication.

Dr. Getasew Sisay is an assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Gondar from where he received his medical doctorate degree in 2012. After working as a general practitioner and serving as a lecturer at the University of Gondar for 18 months, he returned to the university for a four-year OB residency. He served for two and a half years at a general hospital, eventually accepting a position at the University of Gondar as an assistant professor. He currently also serves as a maternal and fetal medicine fellow.

His research supported by PREPSS focuses on the factors for discontinuation among users of long acting reversible contraceptives (LARCS). Dr. Sisay’s research was a facility-based, multi-center cohort study in some of Ethiopia’s public health facilities. The majority of users discontinued within the first six months after insertion, with geographic location of initiation and dissatisfaction with the method as predictors of discontinuation. Satisfaction with the method, initiation of the method after an abortion, and joint decision making with a partner were associated with users who did not discontinue use of their contraceptive implants. This research sheds light on potential strategies for improving uptake and adherence for long acting contraceptives.

Dr. Sisay’s overall research goal is to identify reproductive health facts and statistics in the region studied  for future policymaking in reproductive health program development. Dr. Sisay says he and his manuscript benefited from their involvement with PREPSS and the Center for International Reproductive Health Training (CIRHT). He appreciated the culture of teamwork at CIRHT in helping to develop skills in young health experts, and the improvement to his manuscript’s draft content and English language from interaction with PREPSS peer reviewers and copy editors.  

Dr. Sisay's article "Factors associated with discontinuation among long-acting reversible contraceptive users: a multisite prospective cohort study in urban public health facilities in Ethiopia" was published in BMJ Open after peer review and copy editing by PREPSS.

Mr. Haftom Gebrehiwot Weldearegay is a researcher and faculty member of the College of Health Sciences at Mekelle University in Ethiopia. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Midwifery and a Master of Science in Maternity and Reproductive Health Nursing, and is currently a PhD student in Public Health. Mr. Haftom began his professional career in teaching and research at Mekelle University. Since then, he has taught a variety of courses such as Research Methods and Maternal and Reproductive Health to both undergraduate and graduate students. He has also contributed to the establishment and growth of the Department of Midwifery and Nursing within the university.

Mr. Haftom envisions a world with healthier lives and improved quality of care for mothers and newborns.  This is because quality is becoming an increasingly important aspect of health care and is now widely recognized as a crucial aspect of care delivery. In Ethiopia, despite improvements in care for births at health facilities in the past two decades, reduction in maternal and neonatal mortality remains slow. With the increase in the numbers of births at health facilities, increased attention has been given to quality of care. This is because childbirth is the most critical period for saving the lives of mothers and newborns and preventing stillbirths.

Despite the importance of quality of care there are a lack of standardized and validated indicators to measure and evaluate it. To address this, Mr. Haftom and his team conducted a validation study on maternal and newborn health interventions during intra-partum and immediate postpartum care received in primary care facilities in Northern Ethiopia. This was done by comparing women’s self-reported quality of care against a gold standard of direct observation by a trained third party. Sensitivity, specificity, and individual-level reporting accuracy via the area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) and inflation factor (IF) were applied to estimate population-level accuracy for each indicator in the validity analysis.

Of the 93 basic indicators used, only 32 (43.2%) accurately measured quality of child birth care at both the facility and population level (AUC>0.60 and 0.75<IF<1.25). An additional 21 (28.4%) indicators accurately measured quality at the facility or individual level, but some indicators were over or underestimated at the population level. Thirteen other indicators were accurately measured at the population level. Only eight (8.6%) indicators did not meet the validity criteria.

Mr. Haftom’s article ‘’Beyond health system contact: measuring and validating quality of childbirth care indicators in primary level facilities of northern Ethiopia” was published in BMC Reproductive Health after peer review and copy editing by PREPSS.