Maternal, Newborn, Child Nutrition & Health

Our goal

To ensure that women and newborns in low- and middle-income countries survive and remain healthy before, during, and after childbirth, by addressing the major drivers of maternal and newborn mortality.

Jyoti shares a moment with her 5-month old son, Harsh, in their home in Banthar village, Unnao District, Uttar Pradesh, India on July 16, 2019. — A mother and son in Uttar Pradesh, India.

At a glance

Maternal and newborn deaths have fallen in recent decades, but progress has lagged in the past several years.
More than 800 women and 7,000 babies die each day from preventable pregnancy and childbirth complications—one death every 11 seconds. This does not include the nearly 2 million babies who are stillborn each year.
The Maternal, Newborn, Child Nutrition & Health [MNCNH] team manages all of the foundation’s investments related to maternal and newborn nutrition and health—from research and discovery to core product development, launch, and scale-up in key markets.
We work to address the underlying risk factors for poor health among mothers and infants, with a prevention-first approach that focuses on early intervention to ensure healthy pregnancies, safe deliveries, and thriving babies.
Informed by data on risk and mortality and cutting-edge data modeling, we focus our investments on high-impact, low-cost innovations that target the most dangerous threats to mothers and babies.

Our strategy

The MNCNH program envisions a world where healthy mothers deliver healthy babies and receive quality care from skilled health workers such as midwives.

We aim to understand biological and social vulnerabilities in women and babies and develop innovative tools and practices that strengthen health care systems, reduce inequities, and improve health outcomes.

Central to our work are product innovations to address underlying biological drivers of risk and mortality and improved data on MNCNH-specific conditions. After years of investing in the development of a pipeline of accessible and effective interventions, we have assembled a grant portfolio of 16 products, nine of which are ready or nearly ready for market—and could together save 2 million lives by 2030.

We support the development and implementation of regional and global policy and financing strategies that expand the use of proven interventions. This includes facilitating collaborations among governments, professional associations, multilateral organizations, civil society organizations, and the private sector.

Our partners

We do our work in collaboration with grantees and other partners, who join us in taking risks, pushing for new solutions, and harnessing the transformative power of science and technology.

Partners of Human Potential

How does a mother’s touch lead to a scientific breakthrough?

Bean varieties developed by National Agricultural Research Organization photographed in Uganda.

“The biggest failure we have in providing health care to mothers and children is a failure of imagination…. If we can send a rover to Mars, we can imagine a world where mothers and babies can live long and healthy lives.”

Dr. Paul Farmer

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Areas of focus

Our strategy has an end-to-end focus, from research and development through the launch, introduction, and scaling up of products and innovations.

Generating evidence and knowledge assets

A major barrier to improving pregnancy outcomes in low- and middle-income countries is a lack of quality data.

We support research on the fundamental biology of maternal and newborn health vulnerabilities; data collection and analysis to understand the burden of those conditions; data modeling to understand the impact and cost-effectiveness of new tools; and program monitoring and evaluation to assess the impact of product scale-up.

Developing innovative tools and interventions

While child deaths under age 5 have declined, the children who do survive suffer from more complex conditions, which often originate in pregnancy.

The reality is that the tools needed to prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions are lacking.

We invest in the discovery and development of non-vaccine tools and interventions that target the period between conception and age 2, to address the root causes of poor maternal and child health. This includes interventions specifically to improve poor maternal nutrition and reduce the number of babies born too small or too soon. Our three product development initiatives focus on:

Drugs and clinical development
Nutrition and the microbiome
Devices and artificial intelligence (AI)

Product introduction and scale-up

Too often, lifesaving tools and innovations do not reach the mothers and babies who need them most.

We focus on market expansion and the scale-up of key high-impact and high-quality MNCNH products and services to increase their availability, expand access to them, and improve quality of care. This includes products aimed at:

Preventing and managing postpartum hemorrhage, the number-one cause of maternal deaths: oxytocin, misoprostol, tranexamic acid, and intravenous (IV) iron. A one-time, 15-minute infusion of IV iron can replenish a woman’s iron reserves during or after pregnancy and lower the risk of iron-deficiency anemia—a dangerous condition associated with postpartum hemorrhage.
Supporting healthy pregnancy: multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS), azithromycin, and AI-enabled ultrasound. We work with partners around the world to get AI-enabled ultrasound into the hands of community health workers and midwives, including those working in remote communities.
Supporting premature infants: antenatal corticosteroids, amoxicillin and gentamicin, probiotics, and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). Antenatal corticosteroids could save the lives of an estimated 140,000 infants in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia by 2030.

Many of these innovations could be provided in facility or community settings by nurses or midwives, potentially strengthening connections in the workforce across community frontline workers, nurses, midwives, and hospital-based providers.

Policy, advocacy, and communications

Global funding for MNCNH has stagnated since 2017. We work to address this by advancing evidence-based policies and financing for the most effective products and practices for mothers and babies.

In addition to specific issue-focused advocacy, we bring together diverse stakeholders and champions to amplify new data and shared frameworks to help inform effective policies and hold leaders accountable to their commitments.

Why

Why focus on maternal, newborn, and child nutrition and health?

From 2000 to 2015, the world made incredible progress on maternal and newborn health.

But since 2016, maternal mortality rates have remained stubbornly static globally. Almost all maternal and newborn deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries and communities. Two-thirds of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and almost one-fifth occur in South Asia. To change this, we must address underlying vulnerabilities—such as malnutrition—that often begin with the mother, are compounded by the physical stresses of pregnancy, and are tragically passed on to the baby, perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of poor health. For example, poor nutrition during pregnancy puts women at risk for developing life-threatening complications such as postpartum hemorrhage and contributes to babies being born too soon or too small, increasing their risk of death and disability.

We believe it’s possible to interrupt this cycle by addressing the risk factors for both mother and baby. To do this, we need to combine a bold research and development agenda to identify, target, and ultimately reverse underlying biological vulnerabilities with an even bolder product launch and acceleration agenda to ensure the uptake of proven lifesaving products and practices.

In the past 10 years, researchers and clinicians have uncovered revolutionary information about maternal and child health—information about why babies die and what it would take to keep them alive. New data shows that scaling up seven innovations could save nearly 2 million more mothers and babies by 2030. Some of the most promising interventions are simple and low-cost and can be delivered by midwives and birth attendants in communities. These innovations and practices are already accelerating progress and boosting survival rates. They aren’t a comprehensive solution, but they can save thousands of lives every year, especially if they are used together to support the health of a woman and her baby.

Research and development are only part of the solution. Product introduction and the scaling up of quality products and services are key to bringing innovations to mothers and newborns. Given the decentralized or constrained systems for delivering these solutions in many countries, we work with in-country partners on creative and sustainable ways to introduce novel and existing MNCNH products. Each of these partnerships includes goals pegged to specific barriers, which can translate to impact on maternal and newborn mortality rates and stillbirth rates.

Urgent action is needed if the world is going to meet the Sustainable Development Goals and create a more equitable and safe future for all by 2030.

Strategy leadership

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