Child Survival Action Toolkit

This is a slide deck that details the CSA Results Framework for Accountability, Advocacy and Action.

This guidance describes a catalogue of indicators for maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (MNCAH) that can be monitored through health management information system data. It is a module of the WHO Toolkit for Routine Health Information Systems (RHIS) Data and links to relevant indicators from other programmatic modules of the WHO toolkit.  The document provides guidance on possible analysis and visualization of the indicators, including considerations for interpreting and using the data for decision-making.

Each year, more than 700,000 children under the age of five - 90% of them in 40 low- and middle-income countries - die from pneumonia and other treatable respiratory infections. Also, nearly 7 million babies under two months experience possible serious bacterial infections. Virtually all of these children could be effectively treated with oral amoxicillin in pediatric formulations or with injectable gentamicin, two widely available, inexpensive medicines that can save children’s lives.  It has been more than ten years since the UN Commission for Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children galvanized global and country efforts to improve access to these and other priority medicines. But in many communities around the world, too many children and newborns continue to die because of inadequate access to quality-assured medicines.   The time to act is now.  Collaborating together, USAID, UNICEF, the Global Child Health Task Force, GHSC-PSM, MTaPS and PQM +, with input from other partners, have issued a Call to Action, which outlines four bottlenecks and lists clear action steps that countries can take now. The bottlenecks are: poor quantification of need insufficient financing lack of quality assurance inappropriate use The Call to Action describes the critical roles of country stakeholders, donors, implementing partners, and civil society organizations in driving immediate, concrete actions to improve access to and appropriate use of amoxicillin and gentamicin for childhood pneumonia and newborn infections.  Download the Call to Action for information on how to work with your country’s child health technical working group to address barriers inhibiting access and appropriate use of amoxicillin and gentamicin in your context, and move forward to save the lives of babies and children. Available in French, Spanish, and Portuguese (see above)

This handbook guides program managers and planners on caring for newborns and children in the community, including outlining a set of intervention packages and key decisions and actions required for country-level planning and implementation.

Document presenting the vision for the Child Survival Action (CSA) initiative, last updated February 2023. 

This Child Survival Action plan template can help countries develop a medium term plan for prioritized actions to reduce child mortality 

This Child Survival Action plan template can help countries develop a medium term plan for prioritized actions to reduce child mortality. This includes example content from Sierra Leone.

As countries prepare to accelerate action for child survival, they are faced with multiple decisions. There is no one-size fits all approach that can be applied to this process, as every context requires different solutions. Countries must decide what is most suitable for their context based on existing health systems challenges, local standards and policy recommendations, financial resources, different stakeholder groups, and other factors. While approaches may vary according to local circumstances, the global CSA working group has developed the following guidance checklist recommending practical steps to consider when developing/sharpening and rolling-out child health plans. This top-level tool should also be useful in identifying which CSA phase a country is in and the category of tools to focus efforts.

Learn and share about the Child Survival Action (CSA) initiative with this two-page summary developed ahead of the 2nd Global Pneumonia Forum. More information on CSA here.

Slide deck presenting the vision for the Child Survival Action Initiative, last updated November 2023.

The Blueprint for Advocacy and Action on Child Survival complements the CSA vision document and sets out a coordinated approach to advocacy that sees CSA permeate the highest levels of influence, decision-making, and accountability- both at the national level and globally. It is intended to catalyze new momentum and a renewed movement, finishing the work that we started under the Millennium Development Goals to end preventable child deaths.

The Child Survival Wheel provides an integrated framework of key interventions and actions proven to effectively protect, prevent, diagnose, and treat the leading causes of child death.

This technical brief provides an assessment of progress on this indicator set and presents a way forward to improve child survival. It is organized into four sections: Section 1 reviews child mortality trends and causes of child deaths; Section 2 provides a snapshot of child nutritional status; Section 3 examines coverage of select child health and nutrition interventions, with a focus on countries that are of track for SDG 3.2.1; Section 4describes how accelerations in child survival can be achieved through a primary health care approach and renewed global and country commitment to children.

This tool, and accompanying handbook, is designed to cost community health programs and packages of services.  Guidance is provided on how to use results to help assess performance, plan future services, and prepare investment cases for resource mobilization.

The Countdown RMNCAH country and regional profiles present the latest evidence to assess progress in improving women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health.

The country-specific Child Survival Wheels illustrate progress for selected tracer indicators across three pillars and shows where urgent action is needed to protect, prevent, diagnose, and treat the leading causes of child death in that country.

This template can be used to support a group exercise during a prioritization workshop.

The purpose of this workbook is to assist ministries of health, health managers and practitioners in engaging with the private sector on delivery of quality maternal, newborn and child health services in lower- and middle-income countries. The workbook suggests for countries to take an iterative approach, and the steps are supported by various guiding tools for the process. 

EQUIST helps to develop plans based on equity principles. It can be used to analyze bottlenecks for RMNH interventions, identify strategies to overcome bottlenecks, and develop scenarios and cost-comparisons.

A quantification tool to help countries estimate their needs in non-malaria commodities and the gap that Global Fund could potentially fund. The tool facilitates completion of the GF non-malaria iCCM gap tables required as part of the funding request to Global Fund.The tool is an Excel spreadsheet which enables the user to estimate the forecast and procurement requirements for amoxicillin to treat pneumonia cases, as well as for ORS and zinc sulfate to treat diarrhea cases in children 2-59 months at the community level, using the morbidity method of quantification.

This tool outlines the main steps for planning and implementing a programme review for MNCAH.  It includes a proposed agenda and templates for group work to support facilitation of an MNCAH program review workshop.Accompanying resources:Guide for conducting national and subnational programme reviews for maternal, newborn, child and adolescent healthMaternal, newborn, child and adolescent health programme review data tool

This forecasting supplement, which complements a general guidance document Quantification of Health Commodities: A Guide to Forecasting and Supply Planning for Procurement, will assist program managers, service providers, and technical experts when conducting quantification of needs for priority reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health medical products. It has been updated to include new products and recommendations from WHO.

A systematic methodology used to prioritize and define a core set of indicators for monitoring the quality of facility-level care for children and young adults, and their metadata for progress tracking, accountability, learning and improvement, at facility, sub-national, national and global levels.

This guidance outlines a set of standardized indicators collected by community health workers on their activities and on the communities they serve.

This tool provides an overview of purpose, methodology, scope, and other considerations for MNCAH programme reviews.Accompanying resources:Facilitators’ guide for conducting national and subnational programme reviews for maternal, newborn, child and adolescent healthMaternal, newborn, child and adolescent health programme review data tool

This document provides guidance for establishing and conducting child death reviews as part of overall quality improvement.

This resource provides operational guidance for policy makers and program implementers on how stakeholder and community engagement can be incorporated into quality improvement initiatives for maternal, newborn, and child health, including conducting stakeholder and community mapping and analysis, establishing governance structure, and developing communication and advocacy strategies.

LiST is a modeling tool which allows users to estimate the impact of coverage change on mortality in low- and middle-income countries.  It calculates the number of deaths averted under various scenarios, providing planners and decision-makers with an evidence-based approach for setting targets.

This modular-based training is designed to provide knowledge and skills on the basic principles of program planning for RMNCAH.  The training modules specifically focus on the implementation planning cycle at sub-national level.

This tool provides proposed indicators/areas for gathering data and information needed to prepare for a programme review.  It includes a Microsoft Excel-based tool to allow for country specific adaptation and simple built-in analyses.Accompanying resources:Facilitators’ guide for conducting national and subnational programme reviews for maternal, newborn, child and adolescent healthGuide for conducting national and subnational programme reviews for maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health

This document provides globally established guidance on the contribution of community engagement in development practice as well as humanitarian action. The objective of the standards is to support implementation of high quality, evidence-based community engagement at scale in development and humanitarian contexts.

The OneHealth tool is a modular software tool aimed at supporting national strategic health planning in low- and middle-income countries.  The tool offers a comprehensive approach in linking targets for disease control and prevention programs to the necessary health systems investments.

This guidance provides countries with a conceptual framework for measuring primary health care (PHC) performance.  It includes a menu of indicators to track and monitor progress in strengthening PHC-oriented health systems as an accelerator towards universal health care.  Countries can use the framework and indicators to assess and monitor gaps and needs in PHC to guide actions and investments in improving essential services.

This document sets out the four strategic objectives of the quality of care (QoC) Network: leadership, action, learning, and accountability. The strategic objectives are underpinned by the importance of community engagement in improving quality of care.

This technical package provides a comprehensive framework to enable national policymakers and planners to focus investments on priority, effective and sustainable interventions; assess recommendation actions, best practices tools and standards; and identify gaps and allow for continuous monitoring based on a set of standardized core indicators.

This is an example Child Survival Action Plan from Sierra Leone.

WHA Agenda Item 11.7 calls for Acceleration towards the Sustainable Development Goals Target for maternal newborn and childmortality (MNCH) by accelerated action and investment in equitable coverage of effective interventions, and quality of care inorder to meet our collective commitment to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Global Strategy for Women’s,Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016-2030) targets (see Figure 2). Unfortunately, women, stillborns, newborns and childrenunder-5 had larger survival gains from 2000 to 2015 compared to 2016-2022 (1,2,3). Globally, actions are needed to accelerate progress nine-fold to reduce maternal mortality, three-fold for stillbirths, four-fold for newborn mortality and four-fold for children aged 1-59 months (see Figure 1). The quality of health leadership can be defined by having the courage and vision to transform health systems to deliver quality MNCH care and improve access to health care for all women, including adolescent girls, newborns and children. This 2-page document outlines six actions to accelerate progress for MNCH care. This brief is written by and has images developed by ENAP EPMM and CSA. Design and layout was supported by the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH).

This guidance provides a framework for improving the quality of care for children and young adolescents in health facilities.  

This handbook provides practical guidance on national health planning and strategizing for health, including guidance on situational analyses, prioritization exercises, developing operational plans, costing, and budgeting, monitoring and evaluation, and sub-national planning.

A platform for accessing country data to monitor progress and inform policy decisions for health and nutrition of women, children, and adolescents.

This platform provides the latest, reliable data and estimates of stillbirths, all-cause child and adolescent mortality, and child and adolescent causes of death for each country based on the research of the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation and the Child and Adolescent Causes of Death Estimation project.

This portal provides up to date data and information on demographics, mortality, causes of death, morbidity, coverage of essential health care practices, health system readiness and policies related to young children under the age of five years and older children aged from five to nine years.