ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the advantages of evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention program from the perspective of program recipients—in this case, the trained traditional birth attendants (TBA) and patients. Resources for TBA training were an important segment of a US Agency for International Development investment of over $17 million provided to the Peruvian Ministry of Health for the promotion of community health in rural and semi-urban populations. During the two-week TBA training course, participants are taught to provide nutritional, hygenic, and birth control counseling. Information describing delivery of services was obtained using a semi-structured, open-ended questionnaire administered to a sample of 1,230 patients who had used the services of trained TBAs and a control group of 277 patients who had used the services of untrained TBAs; Second semistructured, open-ended questionnaire was administered to a sample of 250 trained TBAs. Qualitative methods were used to reveal the factors that determined reactions of trained TBAs and their clients to the program.
