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Women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health

Today women, children and adolescents face unprecedented social, economic and cultural change. If progress as regards their health and well-being does not accelerate, they will be facing both current threats and tremendous unrealized opportunities. We are deeply committed to helping women, children and adolescents to not only survive but also thrive and transform the communities they live in—particularly in the developing world.

Our work seeks to develop the required capacity and competencies within parliaments and to promote accountability for women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health, leveraging core parliamentary functions. Support typically includes needs assessments; inception seminars; capacity-building workshops on budget advocacy and oversight; and community outreach.

In 2013, we published Sustaining Parliamentary Action to Improve Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, a handbook designed to help parliaments and their members to leave no one behind and to promote access to good quality essential health services in their communities and countries.

Our work on health is underpinned by a landmark resolution on women's health rights adopted by our Members in 2012. It is also guided by the IPU Advisory Group on Health, composed of a small group of MPs who are leaders on the subject in their home parliaments.

We work in partnership with organizations and groups that share our goals, including the World Health Organization and the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. We leverage these strong partnerships to produce evidence-based tools to parliaments; build capacity at all levels of parliament; and strengthen parliamentary advocacy from community to global levels. Our President is a member of the UN Secretary General’s Every Woman Every Child High Level Advisory Group, and our Secretary General participates in the Lead Group of the Scale Up Nutrition Movement.