Reducing neonatal and child mortality, one system at a time.

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 NICU. The resulting Neonatal Mortality Score predicts in-hospital neonatal mortality with excellent discrimination and calibration using four parameters: mental status, level of respiratory distress, birth weight, and gestational age.

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

External validation across Ethiopia

Dr. Mediratta is currently validating the Neonatal Mortality Score at a second NICU in Ethiopia and collaborating with a pediatrician in London to validate the Score in another country. Over the past two years he collected data from more than 2,000 neonates at the St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College NICU in Addis Ababa for external validation.

Quality improvement in Gondar

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

Community health worker education

With a grant from the American Academy of Pediatrics’ I-CATCH program, Dr. Mediratta led a video-based curriculum to educate community health workers, nurses, and midwives about neonatal danger signs. The videos were produced by the Global Health Media Project. Working with Dr. Ashenafi at the University of Gondar over four years, Dr. Mediratta helped train 200 health workers in Gondar. 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

Dr. Mediratta led a noninferiority randomized controlled trial in Ethiopia comparing 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).

Childhood pneumonia and AI for child health

Quality improvement work to help providers recognize respiratory distress in children, one of the largest preventable causes of mortality in children under five. In parallel, Dr. Mediratta investigates how AI-driven tools can extend skilled clinicians and improve diagnosis in resource-limited child health settings.

Global Burden of Disease

Co-author on the multinational GBD studies in The Lancet quantifying mortality, life expectancy, and disease burden across 204 countries and territories, with particular contributions to pediatric and infectious-disease analyses.

Published in: The Lancet (2024). The Lancet (2025). Nature Human Behaviour (2023). See full list on Publications.