Partnership for Accelerating Neonatal Survival Across Africa (PANSAA)

PROBLEM: African newborns face the highest risk of death - on average about 14-times more likely to die than a UK-born baby. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include a specific target for neonatal survival, catalysed by our team, that every country should have a neonatal mortality rate (NMR) of less than 12 deaths per 1000 live births by 2030. However, almost all 46 Sub-Saharan African countries are currently off-track. Across the African continent most women now give birth in facilities, yet 1.1 million African newborns die every year because cost-effective, lifesaving neonatal care is not provided.
PARTNERSHIP: Partnership for Accelerating Neonatal Survival Across Africa (PANSAA) brings together two African-led platforms: (1) Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies (NEST360) and (2) The African Neonatal Association (ANA). This partnership would deliver the largest network for newborn care on the continent. NEST360 and ANA recently signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), but we cannot reach our potential for impact without funding like this UKRI partnership grant, providing high-return on investment at low-risk, given funding for the two underlying networks.
NEST360 Alliance works with five African governments and an international consortium of 22 organisations (17 in Africa), to implement evidence-based small and sick newborn care with multi-level health system change through innovative devices, education ecosystems, and locally-owned data and dashboards. ANA includes neonatologists, and paediatricians from nearly all 46 Sub-Saharan African countries, to focus on elevating and improving clinical neonatal care.
PEOPLE AND AIM: Our team is over two-thirds women, and majority African, bringing inter-disciplinary technical expertise in clinical care, data science, implementation research, policy, as well as parent representation to achieve our collective aims accelerating newborn health, and also African leadership. Our partnership elevates the voices of African parents in co-designing and helping to answer applied research questions.
PROPOSED APPROACH: PANSAA involves five workstreams (WS). In WS1 we would pool large datasets from NEST360 (137 neonatal units) and ANA (23 units), enabling comparable data for >150,000 newborns per year in eight countries collectively accounting for over 60% of Africa’s neonatal deaths. We will use these data to identify priority applied research questions, co-created with parents, clinicians, biomedical engineers, laboratory personnel, and linked to government and United Nations partners. We will focus initially on implementation research for two high-impact topics: Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC-WS2) and neonatal infections (WS3). Research findings emerging from these two research incubators will be published and disseminated for uptake and policy action. Together we will translate data into actionable changes in quality of care and lives saved.
As well as transforming the health of the next generation of newborns, we will grow the next generation of African implementation researchers (WS4). Early career researcher development opportunities will include remote training, annual skills-building workshops, as well as mentorship in order to undertake research, publish results, and develop grant applications for partnership sustainability. Findings and tools will be shared widely though NEST360 and UNICEF’s ?www.NewbornToolkit.org, which had more than 28,000 users from 170 countries during 2023  enabling uptake of findings globally (WS5). We are committed to including French-language speakers through translation of key tools and learnings, bilingual webinars, and engagement opportunities.
Together we can give African newborns an equal opportunity to survive and thrive, also helping to close gaps in equity for neonatal research leadership including by race, gender and language.