In June, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the launch of his “Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health”, an ambitious effort that calls upon all stakeholders in developed and developing countries to offer new initiatives and adopt an accountability framework for keeping maternal and child health high on the national and international development agenda.

Given the important role that reproductive health and family planning play in improving maternal, newborn and child health outcomes, the Reproductive Health Supply Coalition has been charged by its Executive Board to serve as a platform for rallying the support of the FP community behind the Global Strategy. The Coalition’s approach involves a mobilization effort comprising three core components.

The first component is the formulation of a Clarion Call to Action for reducing unmet need for family planning in low and middle income countries. To be defined by a team of renowned scholars and researchers in the reproductive health field, the Clarion Call accurately represents what we, as members of the family planning community, believe we can contribute towards realizing the total number of new contraceptive users projected in the Global Strategy.

Secondly, using the Clarion Call as a rallying point, the Coalition will seek out commitments of support - initially from our members, then subsequently from a wider network of stakeholders - towards achieving the aims of the Global Strategy. We will assemble statements from a wide range of organizations, each indicating their endorsement of the Clarion Call and stipulating what they can commit as an institution (financially, policy-wise, and/or activity-wise) towards realizing both the Call and the objectives of the Global Strategy itself.

And finally, the third component of the campaign will be to deliver the results of this mobilization effort within the framework of the Global Strategy launch, to be held on 22 September in New York. The aim of this inclusion is to ensure awareness of the role of  the FP community in improving maternal, newborn and child health outcomes, and also to encourage others within the family planning community to get on board. The launch represents an opportune moment in time, both to culminate the initial phase of our mobilization effort, and to serve as the launch pad for an expanded advocacy effort beyond.

For more information on the UN Secretary General's Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health, please consult the website of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH).