London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) has awarded £5 million to the School for Transforming Newborn Measurement, a project that will strengthen measurement tools and improve data for newborn mortality and stillbirths in Bangladesh and Tanzania. The investment builds on an existing grant, which led to the development of the Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) Measurement Improvement Roadmap.

Every day 7,700 newborns die and 7,300 babies are stillborn, while children dying before their first month of life comprise a disproportionate 44% of global child deaths. The ENAP's goal is to reach fewer than 12/1,000 newborn deaths and stillbirths by 2030; however, a critical lack of data in many countries makes it impossible to monitor and evaluate progress.

Although more than 60 countries with a high burden of newborn mortality have now pledged to improve newborn survival, there is widespread lack of data. Many newborn deaths are not reported, and many recorded deaths often do not have any supporting audit or autopsy information. As a result, it is impossible to hold governments to account on their commitments, to target investment, or to prioritise resource use.

Collecting data is needed to measure coverage and establish standardised indicators for key life-saving interventions including resuscitation, treatment of serious neonatal infection, antenatal corticosteroids, kangaroo mother care and chlorhexidine cleansing of the umbilical cord.

Professor Joy Lawn, Principal Investigator on the project, said: "While mortality rates for children under the age of five have improved considerably, newborn deaths and stillbirths are still shockingly high in many parts of the world. We urgently need more data on newborn health and survival so that we can target valuable resources to areas that need it most, and improve our knowledge of which interventions are most effective. This grant from CIFF will allow us to develop metrics that can be used worldwide to address this data gap, so we have the evidence we need to give every newborn the best possible start in life."   

The Transforming Newborn Measurement project will help improve data in the following ways:

• Test and validate priority newborn metrics and measurement tools in Bangladesh and Tanzania.
• Strengthen measurement of newborn mortality and stillbirths through household surveys.
• Institutionalise these metrics and tools in national and global data collection systems, so that they are routinely collected in countries.
• Increase monitoring and evaluation capacity related to newborn health in high burden countries.

The project is co-funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID and WHO, and will be managed by the School with country partners until 2018.

Related links:

• Maternal, Adolescent, Reproductive and Child Health (MARCH) Centre
• Maternal and Newborn Health group
• Masters Reproductive and Sexual Health Research
• Free online course - Improving the Health of Women, Children and Adolescents: from Evidence to Action