Resource Library

Executive Summary: Group Care is a health care model that combines individual medical check-ups with interactive learning and community support for antenatal and postnatal care. It has been shown to enhance satisfaction and overall outcomes for pregnant women and people, families, and young children. Global evidence for the impact of Group Care is growing. Despite this, implementation is confined to pilot projects rather than across entire systems for sustained long-term impact.

The Group Care for the First 1000 Days (GC_1000) project aimed to support scale-up and sustainability of the Group Care model by implementing antenatal and postnatal Group Care in health systems across seven countries, drawing on lessons learned from these diverse settings. The project demonstrated that by focusing on community and support, Group Care enhances women’s engagement, fosters proactive attitudes around topics important for families and children during the first 1000 days, and encourages community building and social support.

Through extensive global collaboration, the Group Care project has shown that trained and committed health care professionals are key to the successful adoption and sustainability of this model. With appropriate training and time to adapt, health care professionals become dedicated facilitators, enjoying and supporting this innovative model of care.

Group Care is a healthcare model that provides medical care as well as an opportunity for participants to learn from each other and to share their joys and concerns in a supportive environment. Changing the way healthcare is provided requires vision of what might be possible as well as guidance through the implementation process. This Toolkit is a concrete guide based on the experience of sites throughout the world that profoundly changed the way antenatal and postnatal care is delivered and experienced through implementing Group Care. We encourage you to utilize the resources provided in the Toolkit to support planning, implementation, and scale-up.

Changing healthcare for the benefit of families worldwide is both exciting and challenging. The Toolkit will guide and support you and by using these resources, you become part of a global community working to implement Group Care.

This year’s United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME)’s findings represent a noteworthy moment in the ongoing campaign to end all preventable child deaths: The annual number of under-five deaths has fallen to 4.9 (4.6–5.4) million in 2022.  The report reveals that more children are surviving today than ever before, with the global under-5 mortality rate declining by 51 per cent since 2000. And several low- and lower-middle-income countries have outpaced this decline. This is a testament to the commitment of governments, organizations, local communities, health-care professionals and families to the survival of the most vulnerable members of our global community.

Yet millions of children still died before seeing their fifth birthday – a loss that serves as a crucial reminder that threats to newborn and child health and survival persist around the world, particularly among the most marginalized children.  In addition to the 4.9 million lives lost before the age of 5 – nearly half of which were newborns – the lives of another 2.1 million children and youth aged 5-24 were also cut short. Most of these deaths were concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. There is still a long road ahead to end all preventable child and youth deaths.

Ending preventable child deaths in every community will require targeted investments in available, accessible quality health care, including skilled health personnel at birth, antenatal and postnatal care, care for small and sick newborns, preventive services such as vaccination, and diagnostic, preventive and curative measures to treat the key causes of childhood death. Data systems must also be strengthened to track and monitor survival by age and to help address underlying inequalities. This will enable us to move closer to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and ensure that every child has the opportunity to thrive.

The Healthy Newborn Network (HNN) is an online community dedicated to addressing critical knowledge gaps in newborn health. HNN brings together partner organizations and individuals working in newborn health to share key resources, data, experiences, and lessons and helps increase global commitment to the advancement of newborn health. It also provides a platform for stakeholders to engage in discussions and working group activities on the vast range of newborn and maternal health topics.

NEST360 is an international alliance united to end preventable newborn deaths in African hospitals. The alliance works to deliver a package of technologies and services that enable local governments to save newborn lives, improve newborn outcomes, and empower the medical workforce for the future. There are a number of resources available to support clinicians, engineers and administrators to implement an evidence-based model for sustainable, high-quality hospital-based newborn care in limited resource settings, including clinical and technical resources, technology resources, implementation resources, and COVID-19 related resources.

This article in BMJ Global Health argues that as new evidence-based interventions emerge and are included in the global recommendations to improve health and well-being of pregnant populations, the global maternal newborn health community must ensure that their introduction and implementation takes local context into account and employs an inclusive, equitable, health systems approach with a continuous learning agenda.

The NEST360 and UNICEF Implementation Toolkit for Small and Sick Newborn Care brings together readings, tools and learning to provide a one-stop shop for implementers to act, use, share and learn. Information in support of WHO norms and standards from more than 300 implementers around the world is systematically organized in this open access online toolkit to enable implementation and reach every newborn.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO has engaged with countries to ensure the continuity of essential health services. Through a special initiative, the Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health and Ageing has supported 19 countries: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, India, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Romania, South Africa, Sudan, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Uganda and Yemen in their efforts to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on essential MNCH services.

This global event shared and discussed countries’ experiences and lessons learned during the implementation, including establishing structures and systems to coordinate the response and ensure continuity of services,  proactive use of data to inform decision-making, adaptation of service delivery and innovation.

This event offered health policymakers, health systems, programme managers, emergency officers, MNCH programme implementers, health professionals, researchers, development and funding partners with an opportunity to interact with Ministries of Health and implementers from the 19 countries and discuss strategies to strengthen the health systems able to rapidly respond and build back better.

This manual describes the global situation on malaria in pregnancy as well as the components of provision of high-quality care to prevent and control malaria during pregnancy.

This manual describes the global situation on malaria in pregnancy as well as the components of provision of high-quality care to prevent and control malaria during pregnancy.

The resource was included in the launch of the Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality (EPMM) coverage targets and milestones to 2025. These coverage targets have been developed to support countries with setting interim targets and milestones to 2025 toward accelerating progress to meet the Sustainable Development Goal 3.1 to reduce maternal mortality in all countries.

Five EPMM/ENAP targets for 2025. These targets show indicators as well as percentages for global, national and subnational targets.