IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v158y2016icp96-104.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fostering reflective trust between mothers and community health nurses to improve the effectiveness of health and nutrition efforts: An ethnographic study in Ghana, West Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Ackatia-Armah, Nana M.
  • Addy, Nii Antiaye
  • Ghosh, Shibani
  • Dubé, Laurette

Abstract

As the global health agenda shifts from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the need for effective preventive health efforts has gained prominence, particularly in low-income regions with poor health and nutrition outcomes. To address needs in communities with limited access to health services and personnel, it is important to develop strategies that can improve the effectiveness of nurses as they interact with the populations they serve. We contribute to informing such strategies by explaining how mothers' “reflective trust” in community health nurses develops as a key influencer in their health-related decision-making and behavior. Between December 2012 and June 2013, our ethnographic study gathered data in three adjacent rural and semi-rural communities in Ghana's Eastern Region, using interviews with 39 nursing mothers, three focus groups – with mothers, health-workers, and community leaders – as well as 941 h of participant observation. We focused on interactions between mothers and nurses, highlighting tensions between communities' traditions and messages that nurses bring, which are often based on modern science. We also investigated how mothers come to exhibit reflective trust in the nurses to make sense of traditional and scientific knowledge on infant feeding, and integrate them into their own feeding decisions. Our findings have global implications for effectively sustaining and scaling health and nutrition efforts through community approaches.

Suggested Citation

  • Ackatia-Armah, Nana M. & Addy, Nii Antiaye & Ghosh, Shibani & Dubé, Laurette, 2016. "Fostering reflective trust between mothers and community health nurses to improve the effectiveness of health and nutrition efforts: An ethnographic study in Ghana, West Africa," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 96-104.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:158:y:2016:i:c:p:96-104
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.03.038
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953616301381
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.03.038?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anna Lartey, 2013. "Nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa: Setting the Stage for a Post-2015 Take-off," IDS Bulletin, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(5-6), pages 49-54, September.
    2. Gilson, Lucy, 2003. "Trust and the development of health care as a social institution," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 56(7), pages 1453-1468, April.
    3. Paul S. Adler, 2001. "Market, Hierarchy, and Trust: The Knowledge Economy and the Future of Capitalism," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(2), pages 215-234, April.
    4. Bloom, Gerald & Standing, Hilary & Lloyd, Robert, 2008. "Markets, information asymmetry and health care: Towards new social contracts," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(10), pages 2076-2087, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hampshire, Kate & Hamill, Heather & Mariwah, Simon & Mwanga, Joseph & Amoako-Sakyi, Daniel, 2017. "The application of Signalling Theory to health-related trust problems: The example of herbal clinics in Ghana and Tanzania," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 109-118.
    2. Rodrigues, Carla F., 2021. "Communicative trust in therapeutic encounters: users’ experiences in public healthcare facilities and community pharmacies in Maputo, Mozambique," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 291(C).
    3. Hamill, Heather & Hampshire, Kate & Mariwah, Simon & Amoako-Sakyi, Daniel & Kyei, Abigail & Castelli, Michele, 2019. "Managing uncertainty in medicine quality in Ghana: The cognitive and affective basis of trust in a high-risk, low-regulation context," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 234(C), pages 1-1.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bloom, Gerald & Wolcott, Sara, 2013. "Building institutions for health and health systems in contexts of rapid change," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 216-222.
    2. Ozawa, Sachiko & Sripad, Pooja, 2013. "How do you measure trust in the health system? A systematic review of the literature," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 10-14.
    3. Dell D. Saulnier & Christabel Saidi & Theresa Hambokoma & Joseph M. Zulu & Juliet Zulu & Felix Masiye, 2024. "Truth, humane treatment, and identity: perspectives on the legitimacy of the public and private health sectors during Covid in Zambia," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-11, December.
    4. Adelman, Sarah W. & Essam, Timothy M. & Leonard, Kenneth L., 2008. "Idle Chatter or Learning? Evidence from Rural Tanzania of Social Learning about Clinicians and the Health System," Working Papers 42884, University of Maryland, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    5. Leonard, Kenneth L. & Adelman, Sarah W. & Essam, Timothy, 2009. "Idle chatter or learning? Evidence of social learning about clinicians and the health system from rural Tanzania," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 183-190, July.
    6. Arvind Ashta & Djamchid Assadi, 2009. "An Analysis of European Online micro-lending Websites," Working Papers CEB 09-059.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    7. Parinov, Sergey, 2022. "Micro-level description of the economic coordination," MPRA Paper 114816, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Isabel Miralles & Domenico Dentoni & Stefano Pascucci, 2017. "Understanding the organization of sharing economy in agri-food systems: evidence from alternative food networks in Valencia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(4), pages 833-854, December.
    9. Sulin Ba & Jan Stallaert & Andrew B. Whinston, 2001. "Research Commentary: Introducing a Third Dimension in Information Systems Design—The Case for Incentive Alignment," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 12(3), pages 225-239, September.
    10. Natalya Yu. VLASOVA & Elena L. MOLOKOVA, 2019. "Mechanisms for coordinating stakeholders of the higher education market: Theoretical approaches to identification," Upravlenets, Ural State University of Economics, vol. 10(2), pages 21-30, May.
    11. Natalia Szozda & Artur Świerczek, 2022. "Upstream and downstream dyad governance within the network structures: Creating supply chain governance for the customized products," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 32(2), pages 873-898, June.
    12. Mengna Luan & Wenjing Shi & Zhigang Tao & Hongjie Yuan, 2023. "When patients have better insurance coverage in China: Provider incentives, costs, and quality of care," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(4), pages 1073-1106, October.
    13. Qin, Li & De-Juan-Vigaray, María D., 2021. "Social commerce: Is interpersonal trust formation similar between U.S.A. and Spain?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    14. Martine Gadille & Alena Siarheyeva, 2014. "Limits to the construction of a community-based open innovation network and implications for specialisation of a small urban area," International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 5(2), pages 152-172.
    15. Francisco Javier Carrillo, 2016. "Knowledge markets: a typology and an overview," International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 7(3), pages 264-289.
    16. Coast, Joanna, 2018. "A history that goes hand in hand: Reflections on the development of health economics and the role played by Social Science & Medicine, 1967–2017," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 227-232.
    17. Andrew McNee, 2012. "Illuminating the local: can non-formal institutions be complementary to health system development in Papua New Guinea?," Development Policy Centre Discussion Papers 1215, Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    18. Parinov, Sergey, 2022. "Экономическая Координация Как Результат Координирующего Поведения Агентов [Economic coordination as a coordinating behavior of human agents]," MPRA Paper 112190, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Jackson, Stephen & Philip, George, 2010. "A techno-cultural emergence perspective on the management of techno-change," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 445-456.
    20. Smirnova, Michelle & Owens, Jennifer Gatewood, 2017. "Medicalized addiction, self-medication, or nonmedical prescription drug use? How trust figures into incarcerated women's conceptualization of illicit prescription drug use," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 106-115.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:158:y:2016:i:c:p:96-104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.