In Search of better Strategies to Meet MDG 4 & 5

The global economic crisis has made achieving the MDG 4 & 5 goals even more challenging. Although many countries may not achieve these ambitious goals, global health has made significant progress. The conviction that “we know what to do, but we just have to do it,” has been replaced by research to answer questions of how to best “do it:” how to organize collaboration, how to identify important barriers, how to decide what to prioritize, how to measure impact, and how to ensure sustainability.

This talk will discuss examples of community mobilization to increase demand for better health care; collaboration to scale up new programs to teach birth attendants effective delivery and neonatal resuscitation techniques; registries to provide data to change health care policy; innovative techniques that may prevent maternal and newborn deaths in the developing and the developed world; and new government and public private partnerships (Grand Challenges and the Global Health Initiative) to save the lives of mothers and their neonates in the developing world.