Findings from the Bangladesh maternal newborn health exemplars study are now available from the Exemplars in Global Health website and have been accepted for publication in the journal BMJ Global Health.

Improved availability and quality of health services, plus improvements of other socioeconomic indicators – such as access to electricity and girls’ education – led to Bangladesh’s reductions maternal and newborn health from 2000-2017, the study found. These improvements were achieved by expanding the health care system, adopting innovative new funding approaches, focusing programs on poor and vulnerable communities, and enhancing health information systems, among other factors.

The study selected countries that represented positive outliers for achieving maternal and newborn mortality reductions that exceeded what would be expected based on economic variables alone. Bangladesh was one of seven countries included in the project – the others are Ethiopia, India, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, and Senegal.

The mixed methods study was conducted during years 2020-2022, through a Countdown to 2030 partnership led by icddr,b and the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.