Publisher/Organizer: The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Publication date: February 2015 Number of pages: 56 Language: En

Executive Summary

PMNCH in 2014 focused on two main areas of work: drawing attention to the remaining gaps in reaching the MDGs, including newborn and adolescent health, and promoting greater visibility for women’s, children’s and adolescent health in the global development framework emerging as part of the post-2015 sustainable development goals (SDGs).

PMNCH co-hosted the 3^rd Partners’ Forum with the Government of South Africa, Countdown to 2015, A Promise Renewed, and the independent Expert Review Group (iERG). The Forum, which took place on 30 June –1 July 2014 in Johannesburg (South Africa), was a critical opportunity for reaching policymakers, the media and uniting the global health and development community with a common strategic vision. More than 1,200 participants joined the meeting, including H.E. Erna Solberg, Prime Minister of Norway; South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa; Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Bono of U2, via special video addresses. The strong representation of youth participants underlined the message that adolescent health is central to the concerns of this community.

The Forum was a key venue for the launch of new evidence products, action plans and commitments. These included the ENAP, which resulted from consultations with more than 60 organizations over a period of nearly two years, led by WHO and UNICEF. PMNCH led the advocacy drive for the ENAP, resulting in a resolution approved by the World Health Assembly in May 2014. More than 40 new commitments to the ENAP were announced at the meeting in support of Every Woman Every Child (EWEC).

The Forum saw the launch of Countdown to 2015’s latest report which showcases progress in the 75 countries which account for over 95% of all maternal and child deaths in achieving MDGs 4 & 5. The report describes lessons learned from Countdown’s 10 years of work on accountability, and presents country profiles for each of the 75 countries. Based on 10 in-depth country case studies and the analysis of 20 years of data from 144 countries, the Success Factors series of studies, coordinated by PMNCH with a wide range of partners, to shed a light on how and why countries are succeeding in their efforts to achieve MDGs 4 and 5 was also launched at the Forum. The Success Factors studies show that high-impact health interventions have accounted for 50% of the child mortality reduction achieved since 1990 – the remaining 50% is due to factors outside the health sector, such as girls’ education and access to clean water. Through these reports, PMNCH has intensified the call for a continued focus on women’s and children’s health and greater cross-sectoral collaboration as part of the operationalization of the new SDGs framework, including promoting synergies between health and education, water and sanitation, nutrition and gender equity programmes and policies.

This year also saw an intensified focus on the global health financing architecture. A PMNCH aid architecture study in 2011 reflected its longstanding interest on this issue and contributed to intensified discussions among RMNCAH partners for greater coherence and efficiency. In September 2014, the governments of Norway, Canada and the United States, together with the World Bank, announced catalytic funding towards the creation of a Global Financing Facility (GFF). The GFF, to be launched in mid-2015, aims to support country efforts to mobilize additional domestic and international resources to scale up and sustain efficient and equitable delivery of quality services to improve women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being.

PMNCH is currently playing a key role in the GFF development process by convening a broad-ranging consultation process to enable the dissemination of information and inputs from stakeholder groups to GFF planners. This consultation platform, using a full range of instruments including constituencybased outreach and digital communications, will be scaled up and expanded in early 2015, as PMNCH builds from this platform to gather inputs from members and the wider health and development community towards the development of an updated Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health, to be launched in September 2015 in support of the SDGs. The Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s, and Adolescents’ Health will build upon the successes of the 2010-2015 Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, which provided a roadmap to accelerate progress towards the achievement of MDGs 4 (reduce child mortality), 5 (improve maternal health) and 6 (combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases) by 2015. PMNCH played a key role in facilitating the development and launch of the current strategy in 2010. Along with key partners all working under the Every Woman Every Child umbrella, PMNCH, with United Nations Foundation (UNF), will co-lead the Advocacy and Communications work stream, one of five work streams which will support the process for updating the Global Strategy. The GFF is a key part of the operational plan of the updated Global Strategy.

Accountability will also be a key component of the updated Global Strategy. The Partnership in 2014 produced an annual report on progress towards commitments made to the Global Strategy – its fourth such report since 2011. The 2014 PMNCH report, Tracking Financial Commitments to the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, highlighted that the number of commitment-makers to EWEC had tripled from about 100 upon its launch 2010 to 300 in 2014, and that financial commitments to the Global Strategy had now reached almost US $60 billion, of which US $27.3 billion has been disbursed.

Other key PMNCH activities and achievements in 2014 included the production of a number of essential tools to support the planning, management or implementation of RMNCAH programmes in regional and country contexts. These included: the Policy Guide for Implementing Essential Interventions for Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health: A Multisectoral Policy Compendium for RMNCH; Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Women’s and Children’s Health: A Planning Workbook for Multi -Stakeholder action; and Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues for Women’s and Children’s Health: A Guide for Conveners and Facilitators.

In 2014, the PMNCH Board commissioned an independent evaluation of PMNCH’s performance and achievements against its strategic goals and objectives over the period 2009-2013. The evaluation noted a number of strengths and areas for improvements in each of the three PMNCH strategic objectives (knowledge, advocacy and accountability) that will enable PMNCH members to consider the shape of a new strategic framework for PMNCH after 2015.

Priorities for this discussion include the consideration of PMNCH’s comparative advantage in an increasingly crowded RMNCAH space; leveraging the voice and participation of different constituencies and sectors, including greater collaboration between stakeholders at national and subnational levels; the role of accountability products and processes within the PMNCH Workplan; and greater collaboration among actors within and between the health sector and those sectors, such as education and nutrition, that determine a healthy future for women, newborns, children and adolescents.