Save the Children

2017

Commitment Progress

Save the Children is pleased to report that its health and nutrition expenditures in 2017 exceeded its Every Woman Every Child commitment. While Save the Children committed to investing $325 million in its global health and nutrition portfolio in 2017, in fact the organization spent $388 million, exceeding the 7% growth that was foreseen between 2016 and 2017. These investments allowed Save the Children to directly reach 33,314,759 children (0-18 years), including newborns, children under-5 and adolescents with health and nutrition services; 1,298,016 adolescents (10-18 years) with sexual and reproductive health services; and 18,185,869 women with maternal & reproductive health, HIV, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and nutrition services. Combining the expenditures from 2016 and 2017, Save the Children has already invested $726,019,353 out of its 2 billion commitment for the 5-year period comprised between 2016 and 2020.

Targeting the poorest and most marginalised children and their communities, these interventions include a focus on community-based service provision and achieving universal coverage of skilled attendance at birth by ensuring midwives have the competencies and equipment required for saving both mother and newborn; empowering frontline health workers and others to deliver life-saving vaccines and to prevent, diagnose and treat major childhood killers.

Save the Children supported Integrated community case management (iCCM) efforts in 19 countries.  iCCM is a broadly endorsed global strategy to reduce child mortality, in which a health system trains, supplies and supervises community health workers (CHWs) to manage sick children who have limited access to facilitybased health services. Through iCCM, CHWs can deliver appropriate, lifesaving treatments closer to where children live. By combining preventive and curative measures, each complementing the other, iCCM achieves better results for children.
Our nutrition programmes focus on the delivery of evidence-based interventions in the first years by ensuring adequate food and nutrient intake in pregnant and lactating women and young children, as well as effective infant and child feeding and care practices, and protection against infectious diseases. We continue to foster collaboration across sectors, such as through integrating early childhood development activities within our maternal, child and newborn health, nutrition and early learning interventions. We are also investing in growing our capability to deliver direct clinical services in large-scale crisis settings, focusing on the delivery of primary health care services, surgical services, mental health and psychosocial services, and the management of disease outbreaks.

Save the Children’s programmes are supported by advocacy activities and campaigns towards strengthening health systems to enable universal coverage of free, high-quality, essential services. Our advocacy work focuses on promoting policy, budgetary, and normative changes in health and nutrition that accelerate progress on ending preventable, newborn, child and adolescent deaths, including stillbirths. In terms of Save the Children’s overall work, health and nutrition continue to be the theme with highest numbers of children directly reached.

2016

In support of the Global Strategy (2016-2030), Save the Children commits to invest $2 billion in global health and nutrition work, in both development and humanitarian settings, for the period 2017-2021. They will work towards equitable outcomes in Save the Children health and nutrition programmes, measuring success by the extent to which we improve health outcomes for the poorest and most marginalised mothers and children and their communities, including by:

1. promoting policy, budgetary, and normative changes in health and nutrition that accelerate progress on ending preventable maternal, newborn, child and adolescent deaths, including stillbirths;
2. strengthening health systems to enable free, high-quality, essential services, as part of the movement towards Universal Health Coverage, as well as to build their resilience to deal with and withstand humanitarian challenges;
3. building capacity of and mobilizing civil society to hold governments accountable for their SDG commitments, including through child and youth participation, citizen-led processes and the use of human rights mechanisms;
4. expanding and intensifying programmes on (i) proven interventions to protect mothers and newborns and prevent stillbirths in 12 priority countries; (ii) maternal, infant and young child nutrition; and (iii) Integrated Community Case Management of Childhood Illness;
5. training and advocating for sufficient and appropriate health workers to provide essential healthcare for all, along the continuum of care for women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health, including family planning; and
6. engaging with multi-sector partners to deliver life-saving programming, in both development and humanitarian settings. Save the Children also commits to advocate for and support governments to develop and implement costed, funded, cross-sectoral policies, programmes and plans to end child marriage and early childbearing by engaging relevant ministries and stakeholders, including civil society, children and youth.

Commitment Progress

Save the Children is pleased to report that its health and nutrition expenditures in 2016 exceeded its Every Woman Every Child commitment. While Save the Children committed to investing $250 million in its global health and nutrition portfolio in 2016, in fact the organization spent $338 million, exceeding the commitment by more than 50 percent. These investments allowed Save the Children to directly reach 36,168,706 children (0-18 years) and 18,623,873 women with life-saving interventions across seven primary sub-thematic work areas:

1) maternal, newborn and reproductive health;

2) child health;

3) maternal, infant, and young child nutrition;

4) water, sanitation and hygiene;

5) human immunodeficiency virus;

6) adolescent sexual and reproductive health; and

7) clinical services in crisis settings.

2015

Save the Children commits to invest $250 million in our global health and nutrition work in 2016. A full five-year commitment (2016-2020) will be submitted by the 2016 World Health Assembly. We will work towards equitable approaches and outcomes in our health and nutrition programmes, measuring our success by the extent to which we improve health outcomes for the poorest and most marginalised children and their communities, including: (1) promoting policy, budgetary, and normative changes in health and nutrition that accelerate progress on ending preventable, newborn, child and adolescent deaths, including stillbirths; (2) strengthening healthcare systems to enable universal coverage of free, high-quality, essential services; (3) building capacity of and mobilizing civil society to hold governments accountable for their SDG commitments on women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health, including through the use of human rights and child rights instruments; (4) expanding and intensifying efforts to support universal coverage of quality care around the time of birth, including skilled birth attendance, and integrating proven interventions to protect mothers and newborns and prevent stillbirths in 12 priority countries; (5) training and advocating for health workers to provide essential healthcare for all, along the continuum of care for women’s and children’s health; and (6) engaging with multi-sector partners to deliver life-saving programming, including in humanitarian settings.

2014-Every Newborn Action Plan

Save the Children will invest at least USD $100 million in maternal and newborn health 2014-15 as part of its ongoing commitment to women’s and children’s health in support of Every Woman, Every Child. They will provide technical assistance and support, including to scale up of effective interventions to improve the quality of care for mothers and newborns; address the neglected issue of newborn care in emergencies; and take steps to improve maternal and newborn nutrition, in particular the promotion of early and exclusive breastfeeding.

Save the Children will ensure the Every Newborn Action Plan has impact at the country level by helping governments sharpen their plans; advocating for political leadership; holding leaders to account for their commitments, including new donors and the private sector; campaigning for bold commitments and targets at the national level; and working with governments to address the gaps in the continuum of care. They will also support the movement towards universal health coverage, focusing on equitable progress and access to essential maternal and child health services. This includes access to quality care before, during and after delivery, and reaching the poorest, removing financial barriers and ensuring cross-subsidisation by raising funds fairly from the whole population, and the integration of health and nutrition services using the iCCM approach in resource poor settings.

Save the Children will campaign and advocate for specific targets to end all preventable maternal, newborn, and child deaths as part of the sustainable development goal development process and call for specific targets for reducing newborn mortality.

2012—Born Too Soon

As a technical leader for newborn health, Save the Children commits to working with the poorest families in the highest burden countries to increase access to proven newborn care interventions critical to achieving MDG-4 since over 40% of under-5 child deaths occur in the first month of life. Basic newborn care, especially for those “born too soon”, makes the difference between life and death. Yet societal norms often accept newborn death as inevitable. We commit to working with partners to make preventable newborn deaths unacceptable. Through partnerships with governments, civil society, professional organizations, corporations and the UN system, Save the Children will continue to advance implementation of maternal and newborn services, enabling frontline health workers and empowering families to provide the care that every newborn needs. We will promote increased and equitable access for high-impact interventions for preterm babies including antenatal corticosteroids to strengthen premature babies’ lungs, Kangaroo Mother Care, neonatal resuscitation, improved cord care using chlorhexidine, breastfeeding support and effective treatment of neonatal infections.

2012—London Family Planning Summit

Save the Children commits to strengthening the capacity of 143,600 frontline providers to deliver quality sexual and reproductive health and family planning services that are friendly to adolescents. Save the Children will focus on providing these services to those that are particularly vulnerable and hard-to-reach and will reach more than a quarter of a million adolescent girls. Working to raise awareness of the health and rights of young people, Save the Children will create safe spaces for young mothers and address the needs of girls vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence. Recognizing the role of education in empowerment, Save the Children will scale up its work to increase girls’ enrollment, retention and graduation from basic education in four conflict-affected and fragile states, with a view to replication elsewhere. Save the Children will increase access to education for 250,000 girls, bring 10,000 women into teaching and provided professional development to 40,000 women teachers. On a global level, Save the Children will advocate for policies that will remove financial barriers to contraception, increase girls’ education and provide for the sexual education and economic empowerment of women. Save the Children will form partnerships that will raise awareness of rights, empower women and girls and stimulate demand for family planning.

Save the Children is also a commitment maker to FP2020 in support of the Global Strategy. More information on their FP2020 commitment can be found here.

2010

Save the Children commits up to $500 million per year for the next 5 years (including $150 million contributed by private individuals) to: promote policy changes that accelerate progress on MDG4; expand and intensify efforts to integrate proven technology into health systems to protect newborns in 12 priority countries; train 400,000 health workers; mobilize civil society to hold governments accountable; engage with multi-sector partners to help deliver life-saving programming. Save the Children is also committed to advocating for equity in all health and nutrition programmes to ensure that disproportionate levels of mortality in poor and marginalised groups are no longer tolerated.
State of the World’s Mothers 2014: Motherhood in Crisis 

State of the World’s Mothers 2013: Surviving the First Daythe First Day

State of the World’s Mothers 2012:Nutrition in the First 1,000 DaysNutrition in the First 1,000 Days