• Women and Children First UK (WCF) sets up women’s groups to spread best practice health information to improve maternal and newborn mortality rates. The charity focusses on pregnancy and the first 28 days of life.

• The groups identify and prioritise various local health problems and work out low-cost, low-tech solutions. The 36,000 women currently in 2,004 groups help reach 580,000 people.

• WCF works to strengthen health services, and pressurises national and international policy makers to adopt simple strategies to prevent these deaths.

• Research in rural Bolivia on the effectiveness of women’s groups showed a 62% reduction in newborn deaths. In Nepal, there was a 30% reduction in newborn mortality and a significant reduction in maternal mortality compared to a control.

• WCF’s approach is low-cost and highly replicable across developing countries.