Countdown has a unique role to play in international and national efforts to improve women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health. It seeks to provide clear and comprehensible data and analysis on key evidence-based interventions, to promote effective action, and to strengthen efforts to hold governments and development partners accountable for fulfilling their commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (2016-2030) and the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health.

Countdown to 2030 was launched in September 2016, as a successor to the Countdown to 2015 which played a critical role in tracking progress toward the Millenium Development Goals, and its achievements to date include:

• Establishing country collaborations with country public health institutions and ministries of health in 15 countries in Africa and Asia, to enhance evidence and tracking of progress and country analytical capacity, including a regional network in Africa supported by Countdown global and regional institutions.
• Enhancing monitoring of progress towards the SDG targets for women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health with special focus on inequalities through publications such as the Leaving No One Behind series which was published in  BMJ in 2020, and BMC Reproductive Health in 2021, a global report in 2019, and many stand-alone scientific publications, as well as regular statistical profiles on women’s and children’s health country profiles and equity profiles for all low- and middle income countries
• Enhancing monitoring of progress as part of multi-partner efforts including UN Every Woman Every Child progress reports, the annual reports of the Independent Advisory Panel, GFF progress tracking in countries, UNFPA’s State of the World’s Population Report, and the Global Nutrition Report, as well as technical collaboration with UNICEF and WHO
• Improving measurement of women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health through stand-alone scientific publications and special issues on effective coverage measurement in surveys in Journal of Global Health and in BMJ Global Health and on health facility data analysis in BMC Health Services Research.
• Identifying factors that contributed to improved maternal and newborn health in seven Asian and African countries through the Exemplars in Global Health Project.