Health facility assessments
Following completion of renovations and improvements, we assessed the readiness of the five hospitals to deliver care for small and sick newborns. We used a health facility assessment (HFA) tool that was developed by Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies (NEST360), in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), through a multi-stage process [Facility assessments took place at Hospitals 1, 2, 3, and 5 in February 2020 and at Hospital-4 in October 2020. All HFAs were conducted by the same team, comprised of one study medical officer, four study nurses, and one biomedical engineer from Uganda, who completed a 5-day training in January 2020. This training included a detailed review of objectives, tools, and data collection procedures, as well as practice conducting HFAs and collecting data using an Android tablet-based REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture, Nashville, TN, USA) application. The data collectors confirmed the presence and functionality of items located in clinical areas, and orally asked pharmacy staff to assess the availability of drugs. Data from tablets were synchronised over a secure connection with the web-based REDCap database [