Prioritising women's, children's, and adolescents' health in the post-2015 world.

S ince their adoption, the millennium development goals (MDGs) have played a crucial role in improving global health. The MDGs raised awareness of key priorities for health and development, stimulated policy and budget attention, and created a common agenda for action. Child health was prioritised by MDG 4 calling for a two thirds reduction of deaths in children under 5 years old, maternal health was promoted by MDG 5a calling for a three quarters reduction in maternal deaths by 2015, and the MDG 5b ambition was to ensure universal access to reproductive health. Despite significant progress, MDGs 4 and 5 will not be met. Other health goals, including MDG 6 (on HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis) and MDG 1c (hunger), are marked by major gaps in progress for women and children. Launched in 2010, the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health (“Global Strategy”) has fuelled efforts to deliver the MDGs. The Global Strategy and the Every Woman Every Child advocacy movement have promoted collective action, joint messaging, and effective partnerships. These efforts have led to more money, improved policies and service delivery, and a new focus on accountability and multi-stakeholder partnerships (box 1).1 To sustain progress beyond 2015, the Global Strategy is being updated to build on lessons learnt during the MDG era and to reflect the priorities of the new sustainable development goals to be adopted by governments in September 2015. How did women’s and children’s health rise on the global agenda, and what can be learnt about how to sustain attention beyond 2015? What was the role of advocacy and communications in framing and communicating evidence, highlighting solutions and results, promoting joint action, and enabling voice and action among women, youth, families, and communities? Applying Shiffman’s health policy analysis framework of stakeholder power, ideas, context, and issue characteristics (table),7-9 we look at the experience of Every Woman Every Child during the past five years as a key factor in explaining the rise in prominence of these issues. Going forward, we consider how the updated Global Strategy can improve its performance as an advocacy instrument for women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health, and then set these findings against an analysis of gaps and challenges, which inform the main section of this paper. We conclude with a three point agenda for action for advocacy and communications in the updated Global Strategy.