Which of the following is NOT a preventive method of maternal mortality?

The question asks to identify which option is NOT a preventive method of maternal mortality. Let's analyze each option:

• A. Community participation in provision of maternal health: While crucial for the success and sustainability of maternal health programs, community participation is generally considered an enabling strategy or an approach to health service delivery, rather than a direct clinical or public health method of preventing maternal mortality itself. It facilitates the implementation and uptake of preventive methods.
• B. Ensuring supervised delivery: Having a skilled birth attendant present during delivery is a direct and highly effective method to prevent complications and manage emergencies, thereby reducing maternal mortality.
• C. Provision of essential obstetric care: This includes emergency obstetric care, which is vital for treating life-threatening complications (like hemorrhage, eclampsia, sepsis) that arise during pregnancy and childbirth, thus directly preventing maternal deaths.
• D. Use of family planning for healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies: Family planning directly prevents unintended pregnancies, high-risk pregnancies (e.g., too many, too close, too young, too old), and unsafe abortions, all of which are major contributors to maternal mortality.

Options B, C, and D are direct interventions or services that prevent maternal mortality. Option A, while important, is more about the governance and implementation framework of maternal health services rather than a specific, direct preventive method itself.

Therefore, community participation is the option that is NOT a direct preventive method in the same way as the others.

The final answer is $\boxed{\text{A. Community participation in provision of maternal health}}$