Table 1.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion

Exclusion

Published in English from 1 January 2020 to 8 June 2024 All full-text qualitative, quantitative, and mixed study articles that assessed the level of health system responsiveness and its domains for maternity care and exploring the challenges, successes, and strategies of health system responsiveness toward universal maternal healthcare services, including antenatal care, institutional delivery, postnatal care, and continuity of maternity care Articles in 14 East African countries, including Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda [105, 106]

Quantitative studies that did not explicitly report the overall proportion of health system responsiveness or at least one of its specific domains related to maternity care Articles, including perspectives, commentary, expert opinions, conference abstracts, debates, conference reports, letters to the editor, editorials, reviews, gray literature, preprints, and interventional studies Articles published in predatory journals Articles published before January 2020