Molly Mcconnell

Biographic Data

ID339427
NAMEMolly Mcconnell
GIVEN NAMESMolly
FAMILY NAMEMcconnell
SIGNATUREMCCONNELL M
AFFILIATIONSHarvard Global Health Institute
ORCID0000-0002-3437-3249
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS38
TOTAL CITATIONS143
AUTHOR COUNT38
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2009
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX5

  • Impact of a long-term mentorship program for childbirth providers on quality of care

    Open AccessLujia Zhang, Rajet Vatsa et al.ARTICLEPLOS Global Public Health2026

    Maternal and neonatal mortality rates remain high in sub-Saharan Africa despite increased facility-based childbirth, reflecting persistent gaps in quality of care. We evaluated the impact of MENTORS, a facility based nurse mentorship and training program, on provider knowledge and childbirth care quality. In an unblinded parallel-arm cluster randomized controlled trial conducted between November 2021, 40 health facilities in Kenya were randomized…

  • Digitising payments for campaign health workers in Africa

    Open AccessPeter Waiswa, Juliet Aweko et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2026

    box Front-line health workers are essential for mass vaccination campaigns in Africa, but their motivation and performance are often undermined by delayed, insecure and inefficient cash-based payment systems

  • Digital payments of health workers within vaccination campaigns

    Open AccessEsias Bedingar, Catherine Wambura et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2026

    INTRODUCTION: Health workers frequently experience inconsistent and inefficient payment processes of their allowances, with potential implications for their motivation, performance and retention and consequently the effective delivery of essential immunisation services. Digitisation of payments has been proposed as a potential improvement to the payment process. This study assesses health workers' experiences following the digitisation of payment…

  • Supply-Side Innovations to Increase Equitable Access to Digital Financial Services

    Mahesh Karra, Mindy Hernandez et al.ARTICLEThe Journal of Development Studies2026

    Access to digital financial services has expanded in Sub-Saharan Africa, but this expansion may not be distributed equitably. Improved access may require increased engagement with traditionally under-served groups, particularly women. In collaboration with M-Pesa in Mozambique, we worked with Telephonic Sales Representatives (TSRs) to target outreach efforts towards populations that are less likely to utilize mobile money accounts. TSRs were divi…

  • Failing

    Molly McconnellARTICLEGastronomica The Journal of Food…2026

    Using Allison Hayes-Conroy and Jessica Hayes-Conroy’s political ecology of the body, this interdisciplinary paper explores what failure means in the context of microbial engagement via fermentation. In the domestic kitchen space, fermentation is what David Pye might call a workmanship of risk, and failure in this context affords new possibilities for engagement with the microbial more-than-human. This understanding is juxtaposed against understan…

  • Salary delays among public sector primary care workers

    Open AccessHan Zhang, Mansha Mahajan et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    BACKGROUND: Primary healthcare is crucial for universal health coverage in low- and middle-income countries. While research on improving workforce performance has focused on training and incentives, the impact of basic payment system functions remains underexplored. This study investigates salary delays among public-sector primary care workers across 16 low- and middle-income countries and the association of delays with worker outcomes. METHODS: …

  • The effect of supporting districts to operationalise digital payments for vaccination campaign workers

    Open AccessPeter Waiswa, Molly Mcconnell et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    INTRODUCTION: A motivated and satisfied health workforce is critical for the success of mass vaccination campaigns targeting diseases like polio. This study examined whether supporting districts to implement electronic cash (e-cash) payments, instead of cash, increased e-cash usage and improved vaccine campaign healthcare workers' (VCHWs) motivation and satisfaction during an oral poliovirus vaccination campaign in 2022 in Uganda. METHODS: In Nov…

  • Does bundling reminders with messages debunking misconceptions improve the demand for preventive health services? A randomized controlled trial among adults with hypertension in Punjab, India

    Open AccessCaterina Favaretti, Vasanthi Subramonia Pillai et al.ARTICLESocial Science & Medicine2025References: 42

    Regular follow-up visits are a crucial component of prevention and care for several important non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Yet evidence across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) reveals low demand for preventive healthcare visits. While reminders are commonly used to improve follow-up visit attendance, we hypothesized that low demand could also be driven by misconceptions about the need for preventive care. We thus conducted a randomiz…

  • Enhancing cultural sensitivity in the implementation of the Fertility Quality of Life Tool in Sudan

    Open AccessRasha Bayoumi, Rasha R Bayoumi et al.ARTICLEFrontiers in Public Health2024

    Background: Infertility is a global health challenge impacting quality of life, particularly in low and middle-income countries such as Sudan. The Fertility Quality of Life (FertiQoL) tool, a standardized questionnaire, is pivotal in assessing fertility-related quality of life. However, existing research on its utility has primarily been conducted in Global North and High-Income Countries, highlighting the need to shift away from neocolonialism t…

  • Toward a nuanced assessment of the role of intensive home visiting in improving outcomes for families

    Open AccessMolly McconnellARTICLEJournal of Child Psychology and…2024

    Families' experiences during the transition to parenthood and early childhood profoundly shape the lifetime trajectory of both parents and children, laying the foundation for societal inequities. Intensive home visiting programs, which aim to provide in‐home support to socio‐economically vulnerable parents during the transition to parenthood, are a prominent policy across the globe to provide support to less‐resourced families. In this issue of t…

  • “How I wish we could manage such things”

    Open AccessNora Miller, Junita Henry et al.ARTICLEPLOS Global Public Health2024

    Maternal mortality rates in Kenya have remained high, with the country reporting 342 deaths per 100,000 live births. A major contributor to this is postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), responsible for 40% of maternal deaths in Kenya and the leading cause globally, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Timely and effective PPH care is crucial; however, challenges arise when referrals between facilities become necessary. Although Primary health…

  • Effectiveness of WhatsApp based debunking reminders on follow-up visit attendance for individuals with hypertension

    Open AccessCaterina Favaretti, Vasanthi Subramonia Pillai et al.ARTICLEBMC Public Health2024

    The trial began on July 18th. We registered the trial on July 18th (before recruitment began), including the main outcomes, on the German Clinical Trial Register [Identifier: DRKS00029712] and published a pre-analysis plan in the Open Science Framework [osf.io/67g35]

  • Quality of care for postpartum hemorrhage

    Open AccessEmma Clarke-Deelder, Kennedy Opondo et al.ARTICLEPLOS Global Public Health2023

    Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is the leading cause of maternal mortality in Kenya. The aim of this study was to measure quality and timeliness of care for PPH in a sample of deliveries in referral hospitals in Kenya. We conducted direct observations of 907 vaginal deliveries in three Kenyan hospitals from October 2018 through February 2019, observing the care women received from admission for labor and delivery through hospital discharge. We identi…

  • Examining the Association Between Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion and Sexually Transmitted Infection Testing Among U.S. Women

    Open AccessEmily Unger, Molly Mcconnell et al.ARTICLEWomen s Health Issues2023

  • Health care provider decision-making and the quality of maternity care

    Open AccessDan Han, Emma Clarke-Deelder et al.ARTICLESocial Science & Medicine2023References: 40

  • Starting to care

    Open AccessMolly McconnellARTICLECultural Geographies2023Cited by: 2

    Despite the many conversations in the environmental humanities about care and making kin with the more-than-human, there has been little focus on the sourdough starter and its relation with human cultivators. This essay works alongside the sourdough starter to encourage the growth of these conversations - their rise - by using a material geography framework and emphasizing the practices of care through which microbes and humans can explore new wa…

  • How are health workers paid and does it matter? Conceptualising the potential implications of digitising health worker payments

    Open AccessMolly Mcconnell, Mansha Mahajan et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2022

  • Tying Innovation to Evaluation and Accountability in Programs to Address Intersecting Health and Social Needs

    Open AccessKatherine Baicker, Molly Mcconnell et al.ARTICLEJAMA Health Forum2022

    This JAMA Forum advocates for rigorous assessment of the effectiveness of programs and initiatives addressing health-related social needs to improve health outcomes

  • Comparative health systems analysis of differences in the catastrophic health expenditure associated with non-communicable vs communicable diseases among adults in six countries

    Open AccessAnnie Haakenstad, Matthew Coates et al.ARTICLEHealth Policy and Planning2022

    The growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in low- and middle-income countries may have implications for health system performance in the area of financial risk protection, as measured by catastrophic health expenditure (CHE). We compare NCD CHE to the CHE cases caused by communicable diseases (CDs) across health systems to examine whether: (1) disease burden and CHE are linked, (2) NCD CHE disproportionately affects wealthier househo…

  • Impact of campaign-style delivery of routine vaccines

    Open AccessEmma Clarke-Deelder, Christian Suharlim et al.ARTICLEHealth Policy and Planning2021

    The world is not on track to achieve the goals for immunization coverage and equity described by the World Health Organization’s Global Vaccine Action Plan. Many countries struggle to increase coverage of routine vaccination, and there is little evidence about how to do so effectively. In India in 2016, only 62% of children had received a full course of basic vaccines. In response, in 2017–18 the government implemented Intensified Mission Indradh…

  • The role of chicken management practices in children’s exposure to environmental contamination

    Open AccessSimone Passarelli, Ramya Ambikapathi et al.ARTICLEBMC Public Health2021

    Clinical trials number: NCT03152227 ; Retrospectively registered at ClinicalTrials.gov on May 12, 2012

  • Assessing the performance of beneficiary targeting in Brazil’s More Doctors Programme

    Open AccessEce A Özçelik, Adriano Massuda et al.ARTICLEHealth Policy and Planning2021References: 46

    Many countries employ strategies that rest on the use of an explicitly defined set of criteria to identify underserved communities. Yet, we know relatively little about the performance of community-level targeting in large-scale health programmes. To address this gap, we examine the performance of community targeting in the More Doctors Programme (MDP). Our analysis covers all 5570 municipalities in the period between 2013 and 2017 using publicly…

  • Bypassing high-quality maternity facilities

    Open AccessDorit T Stein, Ginger Golub et al.ARTICLEHealth Policy and Planning2021Cited by: 1References: 32

    Utilization of high-quality maternal care is an important link along the pathway from increased facility-based delivery to improved maternal health outcomes, however women in Nairobi do not all deliver in the highest quality facilities available to them. We explored whether women living in peri-urban Nairobi who live nearby to high-quality facilities bypassed, or travelled farther than, their nearest high technical quality facility using survey d…

  • Behavioural insights to support increased consumption of quality protein maize by young children

    Open AccessKatherine Donato, Molly Mcconnell et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2020

    INTRODUCTION: Biofortified crops have tremendous potential to improve child nutrition. We tested whether complementing the distribution of quality protein maize (QPM) with a package of interventions informed by behavioural insights could support greater consumption of QPM by young children and translate into improved growth. METHODS: We conducted a cluster-randomised trial in Oromia, Ethiopia. Clusters of households with a child between 6 and 35 …

  • Impact of Brazil's More Doctors Program on hospitalizations for primary care sensitive cardiovascular conditions

    Open AccessEce A Özçelik, Adriano Massuda et al.ARTICLESSM - Population Health2020

    Globally, cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of disease burden and death. Timely and appropriate provision of primary care may lead to sizeable reductions in hospitalizations for a range of chronic and acute health conditions. In this paper, we study the impact of Brazil's More Doctors Program (MDP) on hospitalizations due to cerebrovascular disease and hypertension. We exploit the geographic variation in the uptake of the MPD and comb…