Healthy Lives for Vulnerable Women and Children

Emerging reflections and lessons point to the need to put LMIC stakeholders and researchers, and their knowledge, at the centre of research and development processes so they can lead the research and use the findings to promote sustainable change. [...] What is needed is the stewardship, capacities, and fiscal space to ensure the existence of a system that offers a continuum of care and support for the adolescent and for the mother and her family. [...] Social and economic conditions and their effects on people’s THE ISSUES AND THE DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT 9 lives determine their risk of illness and the actions taken to prevent them becoming ill or treat illness when it occurs.16 An IDRC-supported health systems knowledge network17 of thought leaders examined these issues and contributed to the WHO’s landmark report18 on the social determinants of hea [...] The report demonstrated the impact on health of the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the con- ditions of daily life. [...] GAVI (formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization); the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (known simply as the Global Fund); the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief THE ISSUES AND THE DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT 11 (PEPFAR); and the World Bank’s Multi-Country AIDS Program (World Bank MAP) focused on individual diseases or health interventions and played a major