Maternal Postpartum Depression Screening Interval and Dental Therapy Attendance Among Malawian Mothers: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Care-Seeking Thresholds

Postpartum depression screening in Malawi is typically scheduled at six weeks after delivery, but the relationship between screening timing and subsequent dental therapy attendance remains unexamined. Using the DHS Program indicator 'Knowledge of any method of contraception among married women' (FP_KMET_W_ANY) across 38 African countries from 1986 to 2025 (N = 162 country-survey observations; mean = 91.776, SD = 11.342), the analysis characterises the distribution of reproductive health knowledge that plausibly moderates the screening-attendance pathway. The proposed discontinuity exploits the sharp eligibility boundary at six weeks postpartum, comparing mothers screened just before and just after the threshold. The framework specifies the running variable, cutoff, bandwidth selection, and local linear estimation strategy, and identifies the assumptions required for causal interpretation. The contribution is methodological: it establishes how a regression discontinuity design can be applied to routine maternal health programme data in low-resource settings, and it clarifies the conditions under which screening interval variation can be used to identify care-seeking thresholds. The analysis does not report empirical estimates; it provides the design architecture and the evidence base required for future implementation.