Countdown, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Global Financing Facility/ World Bank (GFF/WB), the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), GAVI, and Family Planning 2030 (FP2030), is engaged in the technical work of several global monitoring and measurement initiatives.
Monitoring Exercises:
Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health (2016–2030): provides a roadmap for ending all preventable maternal, newborn and child deaths (including stillbirths) by 2030, and improving their overall health and well-being. The monitoring framework includes 60 indicators to help countries promote accountability. Countdown researchers provide key analyses for the bi-annual progress reports.
Child Survival Action Initiative (CSA): urges partners to address programmatic and health system challenges that hamper progress in child survival – especially in 54 countries not on track to meet their 2030 targets – by energizing national and subnational leadership, expanding strategic investments in primary health care (PHC) and multi-sectoral actions, mobilizing partnerships across stakeholders, and aligning funding and other initiatives. The initiative identifies opportunities that exist and lays out steps that partners need to take to reach all children with life-saving interventions. Countdown researchers have helped to develop the CSA’s monitoring & evaluation plan and other resources.
Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) and Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality (EPMM) Dashboard: developed by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, to track progress toward ENAP and EPMM targets. It allows policymakers, governments and organizations to easily monitor and compare maternal and newborn indicators which are ENAP EPMM targets by region, country, and income group.
Re-envisioning Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) project: is led by a steering committee coordinated by the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) program at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and includes the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UNICEF, UNFPA, and WHO. The project covers Quality of Care (Provision & Experience), Maternal Health, Neonatal/ Newborn Health, Respectful Maternity Care, and Obstetric Complications. It will be framed and implemented using principles of human-centered design to ensure that the revised EmONC framework meets needs at the national and sub-national policy level and at the frontlines of health systems in LMICs at different stages of the obstetric transition.
Health Inequality Monitor: WHO’s Health Inequality Data Repository contains datasets featuring disaggregated data on diverse topics and dimensions of inequality, from a variety of publicly available data sources. It aims to make disaggregated data more accessible and navigable to diverse global audiences. Countdown researchers at the International Center for Equity in Health (Univ Federal de Pelotas, WHO Collaborating Center for Health Equity Monitoring) contribute key equity data, including indicators stratified by wealth quintiles and deciles, urban/rural location, woman's age and education, sex of the child (when applicable), and subnational region. Estimates are available from 123 countries (473 surveys), spanning 31 years from 1991 to 2022. These estimates cover the whole of the RMNCH continuum of care, along with impact indicators - child mortality (U5MR, IMR, NMR), stunting, wasting, adolescent fertility rate and women empowerment estimates (SWPER Global).
Measurement Exercises:
Child Health Accountability Tracking technical advisory group (CHAT):
This technical advisory group to WHO and UNICEF supports the harmonization and standardization of child health and well-being indicators, across a variety of domains including education, nutrition, mental health, violence, environment, injuries, communicable and noncommunicable diseases.
Mother and Newborn Information for Tracking Outcomes and Results (MoNITOR):
Technical advisory group to facilitate measurement, align initiatives, and provide technical guidance to WHO. It provides independent advice to the WHO on monitoring-related guidance and norms and data collection platforms for maternal and newborn health, convenes maternal and newborn measurement initiatives to avoid duplication and coordinate messages, and offers advice on metrics-related research priorities and capacity-building.
The Global Action for Measurement of Adolescent health (GAMA):
WHO, in collaboration with the UN H6+ partnership agencies (UNAIDS, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, UN Women, the World Bank Group, and the World Food Programme (WFP) established the Advisory Group of experts to improve alignment and capacity for adolescent health measurement. The goals are to provide technical guidance for the purpose of harmonizing efforts around adolescent health measurement and reporting.
Life Course Quality of Care Measurement:
The cross-cutting function leads WHO’s work to improve the coordination of the quality-of-care measurement activities across the life course (Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing) by developing and promoting the use of a harmonized methodology, frameworks, technical guidance, and tools for quality-of-care measurement; and supporting their implementation at global, national, and subnational level.