Global Maternal and Newborn Health Platform: First Implementation Complete Across 10 Countries

Between 26 July 2024 and 26 June 2025, the Global Maternal and Newborn Health Platform (GMP) completed its first large-scale implementation across 74 hospitals in 10 Asia-Pacific countries. This marks a major milestone in efforts to improve the quality of maternal and newborn care globally. GMP is a key study for the ARPAN CRE and brings together partners and CI's from across the Asia-Pacific region.  

Using a prospective, multi-country observational design, the study included 96,028 women giving birth and their 97,395 babies. Individual-level data were extracted from medical records, and 37,359 were randomly selected for a pre-discharge survey on their care experiences and 28,006 postnatal women responded. Additionally, 5,708 providers (88% of those invited) shared insights into intrapartum and early postnatal care practices. Facility-level surveys captured data on workforce, infrastructure, commodities, and policies.

This is the first implementation of GMP, demonstrating how a standardised and comprehensive approach to measuring care quality can be implemented across diverse settings. The resulting dataset is one of the largest of its kind and is essential for targeting quality improvement initiatives and informing policy action to reduce preventable maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity.

Analysis and dissemination are now underway, with findings expected to guide evidence-based improvements in maternal and newborn care worldwide. The first 4 papers have been submitted to a leading international journal as a Special Series.