Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health

Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health

The world loses 300,000 women and nearly 5 million children to preventable causes each year. Millions of women in low-resource settings lack proper antenatal care, give birth without a skilled attendant, and don’t receive postpartum care. Their children often become malnourished or are not properly diagnosed with and treated for common childhood illnesses.

Providing quality health care to a woman, child, or adolescent requires a complex web of organizations, individuals, processes, and actions that, together, make up a health system. Management Sciences for Health (MSH) recognizes that when a country’s health system is dysfunctional, women, children, and adolescents often suffer the most. When the health system doesn’t work well, women and their families have nowhere to turn. When it does work well, more women and children survive and thrive.

For almost 50 years in 150 countries, MSH has worked closely with our partners to strengthen health systems, improve quality of care, and ensure that all people—even the poorest and most vulnerable— have the opportunity for a healthy life. MSH collaborates with countries and communities to develop resilient, sustainable health systems that support universal health coverage: equitable, affordable access to high-quality health services for every woman and child who needs them. Building sustainable systems to safeguard women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health—ensuring care for women before conception, in pregnancy and childbirth, and postpartum; for newborns, children, and young people; and in response to sexual and gender-based violence—is core to our work at MSH.