The work the foundation makes possible.

The Neonatal Mortality Score

As a pediatrics resident, Dr. Mediratta derived and validated a neonatal mortality prediction score that does not rely on laboratory information. His team collected data from over 1,000 neonates at the University of Gondar Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The resulting Neonatal Mortality Score predicts in-hospital neonatal mortality with excellent discrimination and calibration using four bedside parameters: mental status, level of respiratory distress, birth weight, and gestational age.

Published in: BMC Pediatrics (2020). PLOS ONE (2022).

External validation across Ethiopia

The Neonatal Mortality Score is currently being validated at a second site in Ethiopia, with a parallel collaboration with a pediatrician in London to validate the Score in another country. Over the past two years, the foundation and its research partners collected data from more than 2,000 neonates at the St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Addis Ababa for external validation.

Quality improvement in Gondar

Building on the Score, a quality improvement program is in development at the University of Gondar NICU to improve the triage of neonates and communication among frontline providers, so the highest-risk newborns are identified and escalated faster.

Training community health workers

With a grant from the American Academy of Pediatrics’ I-CATCH program, the foundation supported a video-based curriculum that helped train 200 nurses, midwives, and community health workers in Gondar on neonatal danger signs. The videos were produced by the Global Health Media Project, and knowledge gains were sustained six months after the curriculum.

After Dr. Mediratta presented the evaluation to the Ethiopian Ministry of Health Child Health Team, the Ministry incorporated several of the neonatal health videos into the flagship Health Extension Worker refresher training, which reaches over 40,000 Health Extension Workers nationwide.

Remote neonatal resuscitation training

A noninferiority randomized controlled trial in Ethiopia compared remote versus in-person pre-service neonatal resuscitation training, with direct implications for scaling provider education in geographically dispersed health systems.

Published in: Resuscitation (2025).

Acute diarrhoea in North Gondar

An early study from Dr. Mediratta’s undergraduate fieldwork: a prospective, matched case-control study conducted at the University of Gondar Referral and Teaching Hospital that interviewed mothers of 440 children to identify the risk factors and case management practices shaping outcomes in northern Ethiopia.

Published in: Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition (2010).