The challenge of child mortality between the ages of 0 and 5 years has extensively increased over the past few years. Furthermore, the ever-evolving and complex consequences of ineffective monitoring of children’s growth and development have been identified as one of the reasons for this increase in child mortality. The Road-to-Health Chart was developed and redesigned for use by child nurses and midwives to monitor children’s growth and development. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the midwives at community healthcare centres in the Nelson Mandela Bay area had the necessary knowledge to utilise the Road-to-Health Chart effectively. Permission to conduct the study was sought from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, the Department of Health and the participants. A quantitative, non-experimental descriptive survey was used in this research. The population consisted of all the midwives working in the Midwife Obstetric Unit and community healthcare centres within the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipal area. The sample was extracted from the targeted population but from willing participants that met the inclusion criteria. The research data-collection method was a self-developed questionnaire with closed-ended statements to measure the knowledge of how effectively the midwives in the Nelson Mandela Bay area were using the RTHC. The researcher ensured the validity of the questionnaire by focusing on the instrument’s validity, construct validity, content validity and face validity. Ethical considerations, including permission, informed consent, confidentiality and anonymity, were adhered to. The most significant findings showed that midwives at CHCs and MOUs in the Nelson Mandel Bay area were knowledgeable about the importance of the RTHC to the mother and child and the use of the RTHC. These findings may assist in the identification of measures to enhance the knowledge of midwives about the use of the RTHC thus ultimately facilitating the use of the RTHC by mothers as intended.

This study has aimed to investigate how a growing municipality defines social sustainability and what methodology is used to achieve this. The municipality of Skellefteå has been selected to be analyzed for this essay.  The method applied is a qualitative case study where four documents related to the municipality of Skellefteå and its planning unit have been analyzed. The documents that have been used for the study are the municipality's comprehensive plan, the public health policy program, their development strategy for 2030 and the digital citizen dialogue that formed the basis for the development of the strategy. To gain a deeper understanding of how the work on these documents is carried out and how they relate to social sustainability, two semi-structured interviews were conducted with two professionals who actively worked with the documents. What the study shows is that within recent years the work with social sustainability has been actualized and more visible within the planning unit and the municipality's work around the concept. Skellefteå's municipal growth has meant that the various documents within the municipality had to be updated for them to be adapted to the new conditions within the municipality. How it will be reflected later in the physical planning in the municipality remains to be seen as Skellefteå is still in an initial phase of the social transformation that has begun. Further research is proposed since each municipality is unique and that site-specific conditions need to be analyzed to apply social sustainability in the best possible way. Social sustainability is also a complex and broad concept, which makes it difficult to generalize conclusions based on this study.