When the Helping Babies Breathe Global Development Alliance (HBB) was established last year, USAID Director for Health, Nutrition, and Infectious Diseases Richard Greene said, "Every year, 10 million babies need resuscitation at birth; this partnership will help us scale up this life-saving intervention to achieve impact.” His words continue to ring true: nearly one year later, the curriculum has been rolled out in upwards of 30 countries in different ways, and interest in the program continues to grow.

HBB has worked to develop an evidence-based neonatal resuscitation curriculum to help save lives in the “golden minute” after birth. The Alliance brings together the public, private and nonprofit sectors through partners USAID [http://www.usaid.gov], the American Academy of Pediatrics, Laerdal Global Health, Save the Children, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. MCHIP serves as one of the implementing partners for HBB.

"This Global Development Alliance is unique in that it brings together a diverse group of organizations to respond to multi-faceted program needs that include training materials, equipment, systems strengthening, evaluation, and advocacy for increased national commitment and resources," explains Lily Kak, USAID's Senior Newborn Health Advisor, in the original press release announcing the public-private alliance.

On Friday, June 17th, a group of over 30 key stakeholders and leaders for HBB met at Save the Children’s Washington DC, headquarters to discuss the design of the upcoming performance evaluations of the curriculum in select countries, including Bangladesh and Malawi. As the evaluations move forward, MCHIP will provide updates on the results and lessons learned from the process. Ongoing impact evaluations have already begun, providing more data about the curriculum, its implementation, and its effectiveness.

To learn more about HBB:

Recent additional coverage of HBB and the curriculum has included a blog post on Maternova with reflections from a current medical student on her experience with the curriculum, and a feature on the Global Health Council’s conference blog about meeting Millennium Development Goal 4.

This past week at the MCHIP Global Health Council conference booth, resident expert Goldy Mazia performed  demonstrations with the Neonatalie simulator. You can learn more about Neonatalie here and we encourage you to check the MCHIP website, Twitter, and Facebook page for continued updates on HBB.

Amanda Makulec
MCHIP Program Analyst