November 19, 2024

Global WACh Certificate Student Amaya Gatling supports neonatal health researchers identify pathways to implement a smartphone-based birth asphyxia screening tool for newborns

Birth asphyxia affects nearly 30 per 1,000 live births in low-income countries worldwide. Birth asphyxia accounts for almost a quarter of neonatal deaths and remains a significant contributor to long-term disability worldwide. Early identification of infants at highest risk is necessary to improve short- and long-term outcomes. Standardized measurements to objectively assess a newborn’s risk are often unavailable in low resource settings due to lack of human resources and high cost.

With support from the UW Population Health Social Entrepreneur Fellowship Program, a project team in UW Pediatrics Division of Neonatology is working to solve this issue by developing a portable, affordable device for blood pH measurement and screening in low-income countries. The device, named pHastCam, will utilize a pH sensitive dye and ubiquitous smartphone camera technology to determine blood pH within seconds.

In Summer 2024, the program assigned Amaya Gatling, 2^nd year MPH in Global Health and Global WACh Graduate Certificate student, to support the pHastCam team, led by Drs. Krystle Perez and Gregory Valentine, by conducting a deep dive into customer discovery, market strategy and explore how to build a pathway to sustainability in low-income countries.  For Amaya, the fellowship was an enriching learning experience in the field of global newborn health while fulfilling the certificate’s 90-hour capstone requirement intended to contribute to students’ academic and professional development as it relates to women, adolescent, and child health.

 

Through the fellowship and capstone, Amaya provided sustainable implementation recommendations to use pHastCam in hospital settings in Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, and Uganda. These countries were selected by the project team given their commitment to meet the World Health Organization (WHO) SDG target of reducing neonatal mortality to 12 deaths per 10,000 live births or lower by 2030. Amaya developed an ecosystem map to help visually understand the interactions between various stakeholders that would contribute to pHastCam implementation and conducted 35 interviews to gather detailed information. She also conducted market research looking at neonatal epidemiological data, funding landscapes, Ministry of Health priorities, medical device regulatory processes, current newborn health programs, key normative guidelines, and potential partner organizations currently doing similar work in these settings.

 

From this experience, Amaya has grown a deeper career interest in global newborn health and in lifesaving interventions that improve the health of newborns and reduce neonatal mortality. She met many experts by way of the pHastCam team leads and engineers, stakeholder interviews, and the Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship Team (Arti Shah, Christian Primack Metcalfe, and Jessica Roberto). Most importantly to her, she learned best practices in ensuring the sustainability of global health innovations, including country ownership and alignment with existing efforts.

We look forward to sharing more about Amaya’s capstone at the Global WACh Student Poster Symposium in May 2025. Please join us to learn about other impactful projects by student researchers.