#MDG456Live to #GlobalGoalsLive: Mobilizing for a Healthier World

Fifteen years ago the world pledged to take unprecedented action to address poverty on a global scale. Committing to the ten Millennium Development Goals meant halving poverty, halting HIV/AIDS, and achieving more bold targets to see 2015 a better, safer, and healthier world. #MDG456Live began in 2013 as an event coverage partnership between Johnson & Johnson, FHI 360, Women Deliver, and Girls’ Globe, and over the course of 2+ years, focused its work on lifting up stories and voices in advocacy for maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health. Effective communications and advocacy partnerships were essential to brining “unusual suspects” into MDG conversations in a way that focused on elevating voices and stories of lives saved and health improved.

Now in 2015, the world is building on the tremendous momentum of the MDGs with the launch of the UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development. The seventeen Global Goals are the ambitious plan set forward for the development community to unite and take action to end of extreme poverty and climate change by 2030.

With seventeen goals and more than a hundred specific targets, #MDG456Live needed to evolve to sustain its objective of keeping MNCAH front-and-center in global health and development conversations. The recently relaunched #GlobalGoalLive campaign will help drive advocacy and engagement around maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health, helping tell stories that demonstrate the centrality of health to achieving global goals. Rather than being event-driven, stories are now the core of the platform, with partners working to lift up stories and voices from often under-represented points of view, including youth and the global south. Thousands of contributors have joined this community, building conversational bridges across the globe and across health issues areas, online and offline.