Although the world is struggling to maintain past gains for women and children, as 2023 ends Countdown still has a lot to celebrate:

• We hosted our largest in-person Countdown annual meeting to date, with more than 185 participants in Dakar, Senegal, in June, in collaboration with the Global Financing Facility (GFF) and our United Nations partners. This video shares some reflections from the meeting:

• The inaugural cohort of Countdown fellowship program included 10 researchers from across Africa to conduct in-depth studies in their own countries
• We shared results from the maternal newborn health exemplars through various channels, including website launches (Bangladesh, India, and Senegal posted so far) and in-country events, such as a meeting and report launch in India. A journal supplement based on the seven exemplars studies in preparation and expected to be published in early 2024.
• Exemplars results were highlighted at the International Maternal and Newborn Health Conference in Cape Town, South Africa in June. For this event, Countdown researchers spoke in plenaries, and published fact sheets and a commentary.
• The Conference on Public Health in Africa presented an opportunity to share results from research into the health of the urban poor in 10 African countries. A Journal of Urban Health supplement based on this research in is progress; one article has been published, and the others will be published in 2024.
• In addition to the city health multicountry study, we made tremendous progress on the other multi-country studies. The maternal newborn health study held several analysis workshops, we launched a new partnership with GAVI to analyze immunization data, and we also joined the Track20 annual meeting in Dakar to begin collaboration on a study of family planning.
• Updated versions of the RMNCAH, equity and child development profiles were released. These updates included new regional profiles for RMNCAH and the early child development profiles updated & launched in four new languages (Arabic, French, Spanish and Russian).
  • Watch profile launch webinar.
  • Watch profiles webinar in conjunction with the Immunization Agenda scorecards and the GFF data portal.
• 22 journal articles and commentaries were published. This included a  5-phase transition model that integrates data on maternal, stillbirth, and neonatal mortality into a single model and aims to guide program strategies to reach national and Sustainable Development Goal targets.
• We convened global experts to prepare a new Lancet report about global progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. More information to come about that in 2024.
• We also remained engaged in technical work of  global initiatives including Child Survival Action, ENAP/EPMM, the Revisioning EmONC project, the Child Health Accountability Tracking technical group, Mother and Newborn Information for Tracking Outcomes and Results (MoNITOR), and Global Action for the Measurement of Adolescent Health (GAMA).

We remain grateful to our donors, our partners and each of the researchers in our network for their unwavering commitment to improving the lives of women, newborns, children and adolescents.