Galvanizing Collective Action to Accelerate Reductions in Maternal and Newborn Mortality and Prevention of Stillbirths.

With less than 10 years remaining to achieve the sustainable development goals, there is an urgent need for collective action to accelerate progress for maternal and newborn health and prevention of stillbirths. We outline a new global initiative, AlignMNH, designed to create opportunities to better align efforts and drive improvements.

Promoting Healthy Behaviors among Egyptian Mothers: A Quasi-Experimental Study of a Health Communication Package Delivered by Community Organizations.

Decisions made at the household level, for example, to seek antenatal care or breastfeed, can have a direct impact on the health of mothers and newborns. The SMART Community-based Initiatives program in Egypt worked with community development associations to encourage better household decision-making by training community health workers to disseminate information and encourage healthy practices during home visits, group sessions, and community activities with pregnant women, mothers of young children, and their families. A quasi-experimental design was used to evaluate the program, with household surveys conducted before and after the intervention in intervention and comparison areas.

Best practices for a successful MNCH partnership that an external evaluation could never find: experiences from the Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program.

Partnerships for maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) are increasingly prevalent, yet little has been published about the possible reasons for their success or failure. In this commentary, we assess the presence of four principles for a successful collaborative partnership-clear goals, clear roles, trust, and commitment-within the Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP), an MNCH partnership among eight implementing organizations that was funded by USAID from 2008 to 2014. MCHIP made substantial strides in developing clear goals and partner roles, and despite external constraints, to develop the trust and commitment needed to work in an interdependent manner.