Poor quality care is now a bigger barrier to reducing mortality than insufficient access to healthcare, said Dr. Margaret Kruk, Chair of The Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems in the Sustainable Development Goal Era. She spoke at a recent Wilson Center event on strategies to improve and sustain high-quality reproductive, maternal, and newborn care at scale. “We estimate that 8.6 million lives are lost every year due to lack of access to high quality care, and of that 8.6 million, five million lives are lost by people who have already reached out to the health system.”

While most people killed in wars are male, several studies have found that “mortality among women in some high-intensity conflicts was as severe as male mortality,” said Henrik Urdal, the Director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), at a recent Wilson Center event on the links between maternal and child health, aid, and armed conflict. “Maternal health is a very natural place to start” when researching excess mortality and indirect deaths among women impacted by war, said Urdal.

“We are seeing increasingly self-reliant countries develop national health sector plans solidly grounded on technical evidence,” said Dr. Jim Ricca of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s flagship Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP) at a recent Wilson Center event. Expanding successful reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent healthcare (known as RMNCAH) interventions to the national level could make a significant contribution to meeting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals for mortality reduction, he said.

“When you enable a family to be able to time and space their children, you actually improve the overall health of that family,” said Dr. Alma Golden, the Deputy Assistant Administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, at a recent Wilson Center event on the role of faith-based organizations in family planning. Faith-based groups are an “irreplaceable asset,” said Dr. Golden, when it comes to fighting stigma and marginalization and promoting positive health behaviors.

“We cannot achieve our goals of ending maternal and child deaths without addressing critical health system barriers around the world,” said Grace Chee of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s flagship Maternal and Child Survival Program at a recent Wilson Center event. To improve the lives of mothers and children, health workers must address the underlying causes of poor health outcomes, including systemic weaknesses in health care governance, financing, and human resources.