Photo credit: Amy Fowler/USAID

Facility-based maternal, newborn, and child health services contribute significantly to reductions in maternal and child mortality, but practices in health facilities do not always reflect the latest evidence-based standards of care. As part of the U.S. Agency of International Development's (USAID's) efforts to end preventable child and maternal deaths, the Survive & Thrive Alliance works with country governments and health professionals in countries throughout Asia and Africa to improve health outcomes for mothers, children, and newborns through clinical training, systems strengthening, and policy advocacy.

The strategic objective of the Alliance is to save the lives of mothers, newborns, and children by working alongside country governments and health professionals to implement high-impact health interventions and leveraging the combined resources and expertise of government, professional health association, private sector, and nonprofit partners.

The Alliance works toward this goal in three ways:

• Supports and sustains facility-based interventions and clinical competencies through training and quality-improvement approaches and effective technologies.
• Equips members of professional associations to improve the quality of high-impact interventions and mobilizes health professionals to be champions of maternal, newborn, and child health.
• Mobilizes Global Health Scholars to learn from and champion maternal, newborn, and child health interventions.

To support programs designed to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes, the Alliance has developed Helping Babies Survive, a suite of four evidence-based educational training modules – Helping Babies Breathe, Essential Care for Every Baby, Essential Care for Small Babies, and Threatened Preterm Birth Care – designed to address the three most common causes of preventable newborn deaths: birth asphyxia, infections, and preterm birth complications. Alliance partners have also developed the Helping Mothers Survive modules Bleeding after Birth and Eclampsia Management. The Alliance has also developed a Professional Association Strengthening manual and a Quality Improvement workbook in support of its goal to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes.

The Survive & Thrive Alliance was formed in 2012 and was recently extended through 2017. The previously formed Helping Babies Breathe Alliance was merged with the Survive and Thrive Alliance in 2014. The merged Alliance  includes USAID; the American Academy of Pediatrics; the American College of Nurse-Midwives; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; Johnson & Johnson; Laerdal; National Institutes of Health; Jhpiego; Save the Children; March of Dimes; LDS Charities; Global Health Media; STT International; Project C.U.R.E.; Millennium Villages; CMMB; IPA; and the American Heart Association. The three U.S. professional associations have strengthened and partnered with national professional associations in Ethiopia, India, Malawi, Myanmar and Nigeria.

While the Helping Babies Breathe Program is currently active in about 80 countries, the Alliance has introduced the other Helping Babies Survive modules in 22 countries and provides ongoing technical support to some of them. In addition, the Alliance has developed a special initiative, "Helping 100,000 Babies Survive and Thrive," to engage more deeply in 3 high-burden countries – India, Nigeria and Ethiopia – in collaboration with national professional associations. In addition to USAID, Johnson & Johnson, and Laerdal Global Health, the initiative also receives funds from NORAD and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.