Centre for Intervention Science for Maternal and Child Health
The goal of CISMAC is to improve mother and child´s health by studying the effects of health measures applied in countries south of Sahara and in South Asia
Main content
Improving health and survival for mother and children: Nearly 6 million children died before the age of five in low- and middle-income countries in 2015. Approximately 45 %, more than 2.5 million, die within the first month of life, 1 million of these on the first day. In addition, about one million unborn babies and 150,000 women die during childbirth.
The Centre for Intervention Science in Maternal and Child Health (CISMAC) will support research aiming to improve health and survival of mothers and children as well as child development. Projects will target low-income populations in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Intervention studies: CISMAC will perform intervention studies, i.e. studies that estimate the effect of various actions to improve health. An intervention could be for example the delivery of a vaccination programme, guidelines for breastfeeding or nutrition recommendations. Intervention trials addressing maternal, neonatal and child health will be conducted to generate evidence on how to effectively and equitably enhance maternal and child health and child development.
Context and socio-cultural factors: The centre will collect information on health systems and socio-cultural factors in the settings where studies are implemented. This understanding of the context will support planning the scale-up of effective interventions. Assessment of interventions will address their effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and equity.
An international consortium: CISMAC is established as an international consortium, anchored at the Centre for International Health at the University of Bergen in Norway. Research institutions elsewhere in Norway and in Ethiopia, India, Nepal, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia are partners in the consortium, and CISMAC is also supported by the WHO. See all the partners here.
CISMAC has been conceived to be a sustainable consortium and a global leader in the field of maternal, neonatal and child health intervention research.
CISMAC is a Centre of Excellence (CoE) at UiB
