Improvement effect of health strategy on political environment support to maternal health care in Beijing and Shanghai

  Objective  To analyze the improvement effect of health strategy on political environment support to maternal health care in Beijing and Shanghai – the two cities with the implementation of health priority strategy in 2016 and 2017 and to explore the method of quantitative assessment on and between-city disparity in the improvement effect.

  Methods  Totally 649 policy documents on health priority and maternal health care issued by China government and the two cities′ administrative agencies were systematically and extensively retrieved. Using Excel 2013, we organized all the documents and extracted relevant information to set a database to quantitatively assess the support extant of political environment on maternal health care, with considerations on five dimensions of the health priority strategy (right of priority, normative guidance, well-defined responsibility, implementation, and performance appraisal); we also analyzed differences in the improvement effect of health strategy on political environment support to maternal health care between the two cities.

  Results  The index for overall support of the promulgation of the health priority strategy on maternal health care increased from 0.0% to 29.1% in Shanghai and to 30.3% in Beijing.

  Conclusion  The improvement in health strategy support on maternal health care-related political environment is at a similar level in Beijing and Shanghai. An efficient maternal health care system should adopt health priority strategy. The study highlights the feasibility for quantitative assessment on political environment support to maternal health care.