The Midwifery Services Framework: The process of implementation

In 2015, the International Confederation of Midwives launched the Midwifery Services Framework: a new evidence-based tool to guide countries through the process of improving their sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn health services through strengthening and developing the midwifery workforce. The Midwifery Services Framework is aligned with key global architecture for sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn health and human resources for health, and with the recommendations of the 2014 Lancet Series on Midwifery. This second in a series of three papers describes the process of implementing the Midwifery Services Framework: the preparatory work, what happens at each stage of implementation and who should be involved at each stage. It gives an idea of the scale of the task, and the resources that will be required to implement the Midwifery Services Framework in a given country context. The paper will be of interest to health policy-makers, development partners and professional associations in countries considering different approaches to strengthening their sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn health services, and it will help them to decide whether and when either full or partial/staged implementation of the Midwifery Services Framework will be an appropriate initiative to address identified deficits in their specific context, given the current and projected availability of resources.