Countdown co-hosted a webinar with PMNCH to showcase the latest versions of the Countdown country profiles and country chartbooks in February 2025. The webinar described how these tools can help accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health. Global experts, policymakers, and advocates gathered to explore how evidence based tools like the profiles and chartbooks can inform decision-making, drive policy change, and strengthen global and national efforts in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition (RMNCAH&N). The recording is available online:
One of the key themes that emerged during the webinar was the importance of ensuring that data do not simply remain as figures on a page but translate into actionable insights. The country profiles serve as powerful advocacy tools that:
- Enable governments to make informed policy decisions and allocate resources effectively.
- Provide civil society organizations with evidence to hold policymakers accountable.
- Support international development partners in identifying areas where additional investment and technical support are needed.
“Commitments alone do not save lives—action does. And action must be based on robust, transparent, and accessible data.” said Cheikh Faye, director of Countdown to 2030. With only five years remaining until 2030, Dr. Faye emphasized that the urgency to track progress, highlight disparities, and promote evidence-based decision-making has never been greater.
Since its inception in 2005, the Countdown initiative has produced and regularly updated country statistical profiles that provide a user-friendly snapshot of progress. These profiles have evolved significantly over time from an original focus on child survival to encompassing the full continuum of care for women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health and development.
“These are testing times for global health, and already women, children and adolescents are increasingly facing multiple obstacles to their health and wellbeing, including compounding effects of climate crisis, economic downturn, rising conflicts and humanitarian issues,” said Rajat Khosla, executive director of PMNCH, the world’s largest partnership for women’s, children’s, and adolescents health. “We know that what is counted is what matters. Advocacy supported by rigorous evidence and data is essential to ensuring the future of global health.”
The Power of Data for Accountability and Action
Tashrik Ahmed and Dee Wang from UNICEF detailed recent enhancements to the reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health or RMNCAH country profiles, highlighting their improved readability, integration of regional data, and availability in French. They explained how the profiles can be used to track RMNCAH progress and support data-driven policymaking and advocacy efforts across key areas, including demographics, intervention coverage, equity, mortality, governance and financing. Both the profiles and the underlying data are available for download.
Aluisio Barros from the International Center for Equity in Health highlighted the updated equity profiles, which identify and address health disparities based on factors such as wealth, geography, and education. The latest equity profiles include new indicators such as zero coverage of core maternal and newborn health indicators and zero dose related to childhood immunization along with expanded stratifiers for women’s empowerment, age, ethnicity, and religion.
Linda Richter from University of the Witwatersrand described the early childhood development (ECD) Profiles, which track 40 key indicators on early childhood development policies and programs. Covering 197 countries with bi-annual updates, these profiles highlight demographics and risks to ECD, child health outcomes, nurturing care components, and policy environments.
Elizabeth Hazel from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health emphasized the importance of applying a gender lens to the Countdown profiles, demonstrating how gender-disaggregated data reveals disparities in education, health, and nutrition. She highlighted findings from Zambia on early marriage, maternal health inequities, and leading causes of death by gender. This data underscores the need for policies addressing gender-based barriers and improving RMNCAH care quality.
Pierre Akilimali from the University of Kinshasa shared a case study from the Democratic Republic of Congo, demonstrating how Countdown country chartbooks have informed policy decisions, progress monitoring and enhanced stakeholder engagement. Aderajew Mekonnen from the Ethiopian Public Health Institute presented Ethiopia’s approach to leveraging data for RMNCAH improvements over five years. His analysis identified disparities in service utilization, monitored antenatal care progress, and proposed strategies to enhance health system performance and equity.
Countdown’s Collaboration with GFF: Strengthening Country Capacities
Peter Hansen, representing the Global Financing Facility (GFF), shared insights into how the Countdown-GFF collaboration supports country-level efforts in data collection, visualization, and use in:
- Policy and program development, including investment cases and national health strategies.
- Prioritization and resource allocation.
- Program monitoring, evaluation, and adaptive management.
Each GFF-supported country has a dedicated page on the GFF data portal, featuring a wealth of data including investment tracking, resource mapping, and RMNCAH&N progress. By making these insights publicly available, GFF and Countdown promote cross-country learning and enhance transparency.
Looking Ahead: How Can We Use These Data Tools?
Data are not just for policymakers— they are vital for advocacy groups working to ensure that governments and development partners follow through on their commitments to women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health. The webinar showcased how Countdown’s country profiles and chartbooks consolidate key data on demographics, coverage, equity, policy, and financing, providing a clear picture of progress and gaps, helping civil society and media leverage evidence for stronger advocacy. As the webinar concluded, participants were encouraged to reflect on how they can integrate Countdown country profiles into their work. More than just a statistical snapshot, the 2025 country profiles serve as a call to action—empowering stakeholders to make evidence based decisions and work collectively toward ensuring every woman, child, and adolescent survives and thrives.
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His analysis identified disparities in service utilization, monitored antenatal care progress, and proposed strategies to enhance health system performance and equity.