New PMNCH strategy launched as world faces perilous moment for women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and rights

22 July 2025
Departmental news
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Achieving the health and human rights of women, children, and adolescents is within reach and the past decades have shown what is possible. Maternal and child mortality rates have plummeted, access to reproductive healthcare has expanded, and the health and well-being of adolescents has begun to command the attention it deserves.

But hard-won gains are under threat. Conflict, the climate crises and brutal cuts to global aid are having catastrophic consequences for women, children, and adolescents — including a rise in preventable maternal deaths, neonatal deaths, and stillbirths. The multilateral system and the global rules-based order are being undermined, while restrictive national laws are limiting access to essential health services such as contraceptives, vaccines and safe abortion. 

Launch of PMNCH 2026-2030 Strategy

At this juncture, partnerships and coalitions are more important than ever to drive collective action, protect progress and resist regression on women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and wellbeing (WCAHW). 

Today, with the strength of 1,500+ partners across 130 countries, PMNCH launches its new 2026-2030 Strategy, setting out the critical role that the Partnership must play in the tumultuous years ahead. The Strategy builds on PMNCH’s 20 years of experience and doubles down on its strengths: supporting and enabling grassroots partners and coalitions while simultaneously engaging actors at the highest political levels to champion WCAHW; putting evidence and advocacy tools into their hands; and connecting the dots between global, regional and national levels for more powerful and impactful advocacy. 

“At this defining moment of crisis, forming broad and inclusive partnerships and multisectoral coalitions is the most promising way to resist regression and spur progress on the health and rights of women, children, and adolescents,” said Helen Clark, Former Prime Minister of New Zealand and PMNCH Board Chair. “They are also our most effective tool to challenge the forces  seeking to dismantle our multilateral institutions and the ethos of collective problem-solving which underpins them.”

Guided by the power of communities, equity, and human rights, the PMNCH 2026-2030 Strategy focuses on acceleration, advocacy, and accountability to advance WCAHW through to 2030, and in the post-2030 development agenda. It prioritizes uniting partners to make progress in three critical areas: 

  1. Delivery of unmet commitments for WCAHW – including maternal and newborn health;
  2. Improvements to the health and well-being of adolescents; and
  3. Protecting and promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

These areas require urgent action. Over 160 million women of reproductive age (15-49 years) still have an unmet need for family planning1. Adolescent girls, particularly those in the Global South, are particularly impacted: fewer than half have access to modern family planning in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa2. Based on current trends, a staggering 4 out of 5 countries are off track to meet targets for improving maternal survival by 2030, and 1 in 3 will fail to meet targets for reducing newborn deaths3. 

“It is unfathomable that in the 21st century, women are still dying in childbirth,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Now, more than ever, we need a strong PMNCH to unite advocacy efforts to ensure that the health of women, children and adolescents are a central, and not a forgotten, agenda.”

Change from within to confront today’s challenges

PMNCH’s 2026-2030 Strategy also recognizes that the status quo is not an option: organizations must all evolve to meet today’s challenges. With a simplified governance structure, a streamlined secretariat, sharpened priorities and clearer tactics, the Partnership has undergone significant changes and is ready to deliver with and for partners on the ground. 

“Over the past year, we have adapted our structures and our strategies,” said Rajat Khosla, Executive Director. “We are focused on partnership with countries in the Global South to leverage their growing role in shaping global health policy, investments, decision-making, and advancing locally driven solutions. We are increasingly working through platforms and networks in the Global South – including the G20, the African Union, ASEAN, and beyond – and see much promise in what we can achieve together.” 

For the Partnership, in this time of crisis comes a moment of clarity. Now, more than ever, partnerships are essential to provide impetus for collective action. 

“We must not wait for the preventable deaths of women, children, adolescents, and stillbirths to be retrospectively counted in mortality surveys,” said Khosla. “We must act with urgency to turn promises into progress.”

 

Read the PMNCH Strategy 2026-2030

 

1. WHO factsheet: family planning (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/family-planning-contraception, accessed 14 July 2025).

2. Chandra-Mouli V, Akwara E. Improving access to and use of contraception by adolescents: What progress has been made, what lessons have been learnt, and what are the implications for action? Best Pract Res Clin Obstet Gynaecol. 2020 Jul;66:107-118. doi: 10.1016/j.bpobgyn.2020.04.003. Epub 2020 Apr 24. PMID: 32527659; PMCID: PMC7438971.

3. WHO. World Health Day 2025 : Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures (https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day/2025, accessed 13 July 2025).