Abstract Background: Evidence related to barriers to its implementation of home-based newborn care (HBNC) has yet to be studied widely and is scarce. We conducted this study to assess the coverage and quality of HBNC services and barriers to implementation in a rural block of Odisha. Materials and Methods: The community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in a rural block of Khordha District of Odisha. We included mothers of neonates between 42 and 60 days of age who usually resided in the study area and had registered their pregnancy in the study area for both quantitative and qualitative components. We included Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers with a minimum of 1 year of work experience. We used a stratified random sampling to select two villages from all the 24 subcenters. We conducted in-depth interviews with ASHA to identify facilitators and barriers related to the HBNC program. Results: A total of 16.67% (CI 9.39%–24.01%) of infants did not receive any HBNC visits, whereas 13.33% (CI 4.71%–21.89%) of infants received six or more HBNC visits. The significant barriers to conducting HBNC visits were inadequate knowledge regarding counting respiratory rate, nonfunctioning equipment, poor training, and improper knowledge regarding using the booklet. Conclusion: This study observed low coverage and quality of HBNC services. The barriers to implementing HBNC were mostly related to training and the unavailability of logistics. There is a need for capacity building and robust monitoring mechanisms to ensure benefits from the HBNC program in this area.
Pal et al. (2026) studied this question.