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IntroductionEnding preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 will not be possible without evidence-based strategies addressing the health and care of low birthweight (LBW, <2.5 kg) infants. The majority of LBW infants are born in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and account for more than 60%–80% of newborn deaths. Feeding promotion tailored to meet the nutritional needs of LBW infants in LMICs may serve a crucial role in curbing newborn mortality rates and promoting growth. The Low Birthweight Infant Feeding Exploration (LIFE) study aims to establish foundational knowledge regarding optimal feeding options for LBW infants in low-resource settings throughout infancy.Methods and analysisLIFE is a formative, multisite, observational cohort study involving 12 study facilities in India, Malawi and Tanzania, and using a convergent parallel, mixed-methods design. We assess feeding patterns, growth indicators, morbidity, mortality, child development and health system inputs that facilitate or hinder care and survival of LBW infants.Ethics and disseminationThis study was approved by 11 ethics committees in India, Malawi, Tanzania and the USA. The results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and presentations targeting the global and local research, clinical, programme implementation and policy communities.Trial registration numbersNCT04002908 and CTRI/2019/02/017475.

Purpose: Primary care clinicians face barriers to engaging patients in conversations about prognosis, values, and goals (“serious illness conversations”). We introduced a structured, multi-component intervention, the Serious Illness Care Program (SICP), to facilitate conversations in the primary care setting. We present findings of a qualitative study to explore practical aspects of program implementation. Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews of participating primary care physicians, nurse care coordinators, and social workers and coded transcripts to assess the activities used to integrate SICP into the workflow. Results: We conducted interviews with 14 of 46 clinicians from 6 primary care clinics, stopping with thematic saturation. Qualitative analysis revealed major themes around activities in the timing of the conversation (before, during, and after) and overarching insights about the program. Clinicians used a variety of strategies to adapt program components while preserving key program goals, including processes to generate accountability to ensure that conversations happen in busy clinical workflows. The interviews revealed changes to clinicians’ mindset and norms, such as the recognition of the need to start conversations earlier in the illness course and the use of more expansive models of prognostic communication that address function and quality of life. Data also revealed indicators of sustainable behavior change and the spread of communication practices to patients outside the intended program scope. Conclusion: SICP served as a framework for primary care clinicians to integrate serious illness communication into routine care. The shifts in processes employed by inter-professional clinicians revealed comprehensive models for prognostic communication and creative workflows to ensure that patients with complex illnesses had proactive, longitudinal, and patient-centered serious illness conversations and care planning.

BackgroundStrategies for the implementation of evidence-based interventions have proliferated, but it remains unclear how these strategies are operationalized for different types of interventions and contexts. Here, we examine seven implementation strategies--initially developed for implementing the World Health Organization (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC)--for implementing cognitive aids for operating room (OR) crises.MethodsWe conducted semi-structured interviews with implementers of these aids exploring the use of each of the strategies previously studied with WHO SSC implementation as well as barriers and facilitators to implementation. We conducted a thematic analysis to identify and describe the use of the strategies. We mapped barriers and factors helping facilitate (facilitators) onto corresponding constructs from the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research.ResultsWe conducted interviews with 37 implementers across the United States. Most interviewees identified similar strategies in their implementation process, and none offered additional strategies that fell outside existing categories. There was substantial variation among implementers in how the strategies were deployed. Many of the barriers and facilitators were common across implementations.ConclusionInterviewees used a core set of strategies to implement cognitive aids for OR crises, but there was substantial variation in how implementers used these strategies, suggesting the flexibility of the strategies and the value of deliberately adapting strategies to local context. The transferability of implementation strategies from the WHO SSC to other OR-based cognitive aids demonstrates the utility of informing novel implementations with prior successful ones that share similar attributes with respect to intervention and/or context.