Maternal, Newborn and Child
Health

Jhpiego partners with health systems and local communities,
Unlocking respectful, high-quality care for all women and newborns.

Every day, women and their babies are dying from complications before, during, and after childbirth. Most of these deaths can be prevented with the right care.

We help find the solutions that lead to healthier futures, whether through designing better maternity services, improving access to essential medicines, ensuring that small and sick babies get the care they need, or convening the global community to address the greatest challenges facing maternal and newborn health. In the last decade alone, more than 30 million women gave birth in a Jhpiego-supported health facility with skilled care by their side.

No one can thrive when women and newborn lives are in danger. By prioritizing maternal health and ensuring access to life-saving care, we can help build healthier, more prosperous communities – today, tomorrow, and in the years to come.

OUR APPROACHES

Expanding Access to High-Quality Care

We partner with countries to redesign how life-saving care is delivered - expanding access and providing more sustainable, high-quality care for mothers, newborns and their families.

  • Our efforts are rooted in our deep clinical, technical, and programmatic expertise across obstetrics, gynecology, nursing and midwifery, and newborn health.

  • We redesign, innovate, and scale people-centered and participatory models of care, like group prenatal and postnatal care, infant and family-centered care models, midwifery models of care, and family-led postnatal care.

  • We leverage technology and AI to deliver high quality, personalized care closer to clients, like home-based tracking of blood pressure.

  • We create safe, equitable, and efficient models of care with better patient outcomes and lower costs, helping women with postpartum hemorrhage, pre-eclampsia, sepsis, and mental health challenges get the right care at the right time and place.

  • We put families at the center of care and emphasize integration of mother-baby services whenever possible.

Strengthening the Health Workforce

We strengthen a future-ready maternity and newborn care workforce, expanding reach, efficiency, and patient safety across all moments of care.

  • Across the countries where Jhpiego works, we help health workers understand and address their own barriers to providing good care, like eliminating obstacles to HIV testing during prenatal care in Nigeria.

  • Across all of our country-led programs, we work with local doctors, midwives, and nurses to implement modern, evidence-based approaches to training and mentorship.

Improving Health Systems

Harnessing local enterprise and innovation capabilities, we improve the systems in which maternal and newborn health care is provided.

  • We identify models for sustainable financing for maternal and newborn health services, using data to improve efficiency, equity, and accountability and building country capacity to meet demands for high quality and evidence-based maternal and newborn health products.

Providing Clinical and Technical Assistance

Jhpiego is a clinical and technical leader in the global community, with staff serving as members and leaders of multiple global technical working groups that address maternal and newborn complications, including

  • Postpartum hemorrhage

  • Pre-eclampsia/eclampsia

  • Maternal sepsis

  • Perinatal mental health challenges.

Leading Through Global Projects

We partner with countries and leaders around the world to lead multiple global programs addressing maternal and newborn health:

  • AlignMNH is a global initiative founded in 2020 to accelerate progress in improving maternal and newborn health outcomes and prevent stillbirths around the globe. AlignMNH helps to create a unified vision and a collective sense of movement in the MNH community. AlignMNH works in partnership with global and country-based organizations, national-level technical working groups and other maternal and newborn health-focused initiatives to more rapidly share science, evidence and programmatic experience across the maternal and newborn health communities. AlignMNH is guided by an International Steering Committee of 20 global thought leaders who provide strategic direction and oversight to the overall initiative. The Members have direct, practical, and in-depth country experience, and represent countries and communities from around the world.

  • MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership, funded by the United States Government, is a global mechanism that saves lives and improves access to quality, integrated health services by distributing life-saving commodities, medicines, and vaccines, and providing critical health care services for pregnant mothers and children under five. The project provides safe childbirth for mothers and babies, vaccinates children, treats deadly illnesses and malnutrition, and controls disease outbreaks.

    Learn more here.

Program Experts

Dr. Lisa Noguchi

Director of Maternal Newborn and Child Health

Unitaid and Jhpiego advance lifesaving care for postpartum hemorrhage in resource-limited settings

Jhpiego will receive an additional US$2.3 million in funding to integrate the calibrated drape into existing programs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea and India, and support catalytic procurement in Rwanda.

More than 800 women die every day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Approximately 20–30 million newborns have life-threatening conditions requiring hospital care each year. Every year, around 2.3 million newborns die during the neonatal period, the majority being preterm.
— World Health Organization (WHO)