Newborn Field Guide saves lives amid crises

We are excited to announce the launch of the Newborn Field Guide today on World Refugee Day! The field guide is designed by Scope in collaboration with the Inter-Agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises (IAWG). It is a digital version of the Newborn Health in Humanitarian Settings: Field Guide, a life-saving resource developed to assist humanitarian responders in providing high-quality maternal and newborn healthcare amid crises.

Previously, the original 200-page field guide, developed by IAWG, has only been available in print and PDF format. The new digitised, user-friendly version is designed for both desktop and mobile device use, expanding access to maternal and newborn care in humanitarian and other low-bandwidth settings.

For the development of the digitised guide, the Scope team captured user needs through surveys and remote research exercises that guided the website’s usability, accessibility, and information architecture design. The digital interface was further validated, iterated, and tested before the launch to ensure that both the content and interface meet the needs of humanitarian responders globally.

The new field guide presents central points of the original field guide in an easy-to-digest form, including practical guidance and checklists with the possibility to bookmark relevant sections for later use. The topics covered in the field guide range from essential newborn care to response strategy development and programme implementation. In addition, the guide provides links to external sources where more information can be found on specific topics.

Presently, the field guide is only available in English, but the current design is primed to accommodate updates and revisions to the content, which enables the easy addition of new language versions. The adaptability ensures that the Newborn Field Guide responds to the evolving needs in humanitarian settings as new research and practises become available. This allows frontline responders to offer the best possible maternal and newborn care even under the most challenging conditions.