Tracking the journey to scale for lifesaving maternal, newborn, and child health and nutrition interventions

Related program: Primary health care

PATH’s Asset Tracker explores the status of scale-up of key evidence-based interventions that improve health for moms and kids.

It is crucial that health system leaders and decision-makers collect and use data to identify and unblock barriers for the delivery of high-quality maternal, newborn, and child health and nutrition (MNCHN) services to improve health and save lives. Despite childhood mortality reaching record lows in 2019, according to the World Health Organization’s latest estimates, each year approximately 5 million children die before their fifth birthday, with almost half of those deaths occurring among newborns in the first month of life. Approximately 287,000 women died from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications in 2020. Most maternal, newborn, and child deaths and morbidities are preventable.

High-quality MNCHN health services are not possible without access to essential medicines, devices, and interventions—what we call “assets.” Despite marked improvements in access to these MNCHN assets globally, progress has been slow and uneven, and significant gaps remain in their coverage, particularly in low- and middle-income country settings. In order to address these challenges, decision-makers and advocates need data to better understand what barriers are preventing these assets from scaling up.

PATH undertook a rapid and rigorous analysis of the access, uptake, implementation, and coverage of 22 proven MNCHN interventions. We compiled the resulting set of data online in the interactive Asset Tracker tool to inform global, national, and local strategies for improving MNCHN. The project was supported from 2019 to 2024.

MNCHN Asset Tracker Dashboard

Explore the dashboard tool

For the 22 key assets, PATH identified 26 milestones along the journey to scale and mapped the progress of where each asset is along this pathway in a subset of focus countries. The tracker also draws on national health information systems, global and country surveys, and other widely accepted data sources to aggregate data for each of the assets on population coverage, availability, and further detail on the extent of implementation of scale-up for the asset. By pulling together publicly available data into one place, the Asset Tracker can be used to quickly and efficiently compare different indicators or countries.

Access the dashboard

A guide is available in the resources below to help users navigate the Asset Tracker.

Journey to scale: effective coverage framework

For MNCHN assets to save lives, they must be available to those who need them, when and where they are needed. The pathway to scaling up an asset—in other words, the steps taken to achieve effective coverage in a population—is long and complex. PATH reviewed existing theory and literature to develop a framework of the typical pathway assets take as they move toward scale. The Asset Tracker dashboard is organized around 26 steps (or “milestones”) an asset has achieved in its journey to scale.

PATH Asset Tracker framework for the journey to scale

The steps are broken down into six stages:

  1. Ensuring the asset is included in global guidelines and is available in the market.
  2. Including the asset in key national policies such as essential medicines lists and budgets.
  3. Integrating the asset into the country’s data, training, and other health system components.
  4. Disseminating and rolling out guidelines for use of the asset to supervision and mentorship to ensure high-quality implementation of the asset.
  5. Ensuring the asset is available in health facilities.
  6. Achieving equitable coverage in the population.

The assets