Building synergies, one cause at a time. The Synergist 2018 report

Maternal Health Synapse

Maternal Health Synapse maps and categorises maternal health initiatives, actors, innovators and problem-solvers on a global level within one platform.

Public Consultation

The Alliance for Maternal Health Equality invites all relevant organisations and the general public to participate in an open consultation to provide their input.

Safe Motherhood Week 2018

Safe Motherhood Week is an annual event supported by year-long activities and ongoing communications.

Message from the Programme Director

2018 marked the most important milestone of our program to date, the launch of the Maternal Health Synapse. We believe that the Maternal Health Synapse has the potential to be game-changing in the field of maternal and neonatal health. An approach that has already shown huge success with the Patient Focused Medicines Development initiative, Synapse maps and categorises maternal health initiatives, actors, organisations and knowledge on a global level within one platform.

Joining the Maternal Health Synapse will help make your initiative visible to others, and will also enable you to find the right partner, organisation, initiative or resource, and showcase achievements and best practices. Currently in beta, Synapse is the culmination of several years of work including on other health issues, and with your feedback will continue to be improved and developed in the coming months.

This year was also an opportunity for the Alliance for Maternal Health Equality members to take a step back and refocus the program strategy. Through a task force, working sessions and with the support of experts, we defined a joint Policy Ask which we also opened for public consultation. The Policy Ask for the Alliance is: free antenatal care for all women in Europe on the basis of the 2016 World Health Organization (“WHO”) Recommendations on Antenatal Care for a Positive Pregnancy Experience.

Safe Motherhood Week 2018 was the biggest yet with a launch at the World Convergences Forum in Paris. We continued our #MakeMotherhoodCount campaign to collect stories from real women and their families on their motherhood experience, with a special focus on Romania. Our campaign reached over half a million people globally and next year we seek to make an even greater impact by collaborating with more organisations via Synapse.

Looking ahead to 2019, we will begin an important collaboration as part of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) project ConcePTION, to provide improved tools and methods to generate more valuable, reliable and timely information to HCPs and pregnant and lactating women about medication use during and after pregnancy. We look forward to bringing our expertise in building collective partnerships for collective impact to this important topic.

Helena Harnik,
Programmes Director

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Achievements

Creation and Launch of the Maternal Health Synapse

Launched during Safe Motherhood Week 2018 and built in partnership with the Sanofi Espoir Foundation, Maternal Health Synapse maps and categorises maternal health initiatives, actors, innovators and problem-solvers on a global level within one platform. This allows the creation an interactive and rich directory of people and projects that will facilitate exciting new collaborations and reduce duplication of effort. Ultimately it will become a crowdsourced, global, actionable community on maternal health. Currently in beta, we will continue to make improvements, including the addition of a “marketplace” feature matching urgent maternal health needs with resources. Since launch, more than 150 maternal health leaders have joined from more than 95 organisations, sharing 38 initiatives and 87 resources.

Alliance for Maternal Health Equality joint Policy Ask and Public Consultation

The Alliance agreed a joint Policy Ask and potential legal mechanisms to achieve it. The Policy Ask of the Alliance for Maternal Health Equality is: free antenatal care for all women in Europe on the basis of the 2016 World Health Organization (“WHO”) Recommendations on Antenatal Care for a Positive Pregnancy Experience.

This was developed through several working meetings of a taskforce and feedback from the members of the Alliance for Maternal Health Equality. It was supported by expert guidance and feedback from UzoMadu and Thomas Tindemans from Hill & Knowlton, and Irina Trichkovska and Pierre Pecheux from White & Case.

A public consultation campaign launched during Safe Motherhood Week to seek feedback on the Policy Ask gathered positive endorsements. Following the conclusion of the public consultation, a strategy building meeting will take place with the members of the Alliance and experts to define concrete next steps to achieve this Ask.

Biggest Ever Edition of Safe Motherhood Week

2018 marked the third and biggest ever edition of Safe Motherhood Week. The week featured the launch of the Maternal Health Synapse at the World Convergences Forum in Paris (3-4 October) with the support of the Sanofi Foundation Espoir and the launch of a public consultation campaign to influence the legal framework in Europe to create a better environment for mothers. We brought the #MakeMotherhoodCount campaign to collect real stories about women, their families and their motherhood experience to Romania with over 30 personal stories from mothers focusing on “Commonalities in Motherhood”. This was complemented by over 90 blog posts contributed by influencers, advocates and mothers. The #SafeMotherhoodWeek campaign reached over 569,554 people with more than 5,000 engagements across all channels, with media reaching 9.3 million people in the Europe and US.

Successful launch of the Maternal Health Synapse in Paris, at the World Convergences Forum (3-4 September) with 25+ organisations joining the platform

Digital campaign in Eastern Europe with over 30 personal stories from mothers focusing on “Commonalities in Motherhood” as an overarching theme #MakeMotherhoodCount

Implemented a comprehensive editorial plan to support the advocacy and awareness efforts with over 90 blogs contributed by influencers, advocates and mothers

Launched a Public Consultation campaign to influence the legal framework in Europe to create a better environment for mothers

#SafeMotherhoodWeek campaign reached over 569.554 people with more than 5.000 engagements across all channels

Media outreach (press release distribution) to over 9.3 million people (Europe & US) and 269 interactions

Over 13.136 views of the Sanofi Foundation video across SMW channels

2019 Approach

Until now, our energy has been focused on building a strong program foundation together with our partners. We have also started to make important progress in bringing together different actors in maternal health to speed up problem solving and avoid duplication.

In 2019 - 2021, we will take a more conscious focus on increasing demand and creating better conditions for high quality maternal health, including through activities to increase awareness of the gaps and issues that still exist today and which cut across all geographies and cultures. We will expand Safe Motherhood Week globally and will build a more diverse partnership base using connections made through the Maternal Health Synapse to co-create and connect different stakeholder activities. Through the Alliance for Maternal Health Equality, we will translate the shared Policy Ask into a policy strategy that aims to put the issue of universal access to maternal care high on the European policy agenda and influence the legal framework in Europe to create a better environment for mothers.

We will also continue to populate and develop the Maternal Health Synapse to identify and characterise the maternal health stakeholder ecosystem, helping to reduce fragmentation within this active field. Tools to be developed will include a “marketplace” feature to match urgent maternal health needs with resources. We also plan to host a competition and award for the best maternal health initiative on Synapse to identify best practices and interventions that could be scaled up and applied to other settings and geographies.

From 2019, will have an important role to play in the IMI project ConcePTION, where our contribution will be focused on stakeholder engagement, sustainability and outreach to provide improved tools, information and methods to HCPs and women on medication use during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

“Our ultimate goal is to bring access to patients in a much more efficient way for new medicines.”

“I truly believe what we’ve seen so far is many individual initiative that have really not talked to each other, that sometimes duplicated the work and here with PFMD our ultimate goal is to bring access to patients in a much more efficient way for new medicines. PFMD can bring all these stakeholders together. First of all can map all the initiatives, secondly reach a consensus what the best instruments, the best framework would be, the best tools would be to really create meaningful patient engagement. And third, it can then develop a framework that would be applicable for all stakeholders and would ultimately again lead to much much better medicines to patients."

Tony Hoos

Head of Medical, Amgen Europe

“Our ultimate goal is to bring access to patients in a much more efficient way for new medicines.”

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean auctor leo sit amet enim euismod, ut venenatis magna euismod. In convallis ipsum quis aliquet porta. Aliquam sapien nibh, tempor sit amet risus a, lacinia facilisis turpis. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Praesent lacinia lectus sed sapien convallis, ut lacinia lorem posuere. Sed at ipsum vitae risus iaculis commodo eget et ante. Proin leo augue, lacinia sit amet fermentum a, suscipit at lorem. Cras eleifend dignissim sem, ut tristique ligula dignissim non."

Tony Hoos

Head of Medical, Amgen Europe

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The Motherhood Collective Impact Team

Board members and The Synergist team

The Motherhood Collective Impact Board consists of:

Bernadette Hendrickx

Scientific Advisor

Lode Dewulf

Consultant, Permanent Guest

Roumyana Petrova -Benedict

IOM Senior Regional Migration Health Manager For Europe And Central Asia

Neil Datta

Executive Director At EPF

Irene Donadio

Advocacy Officer At IPPF

Dr France Donnay

Consultant, Women's Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The Motherhood Collective Impact Team consists of:

Nicholas Brooke

Executive Director

Daniela Luzuriaga Ubilla

Project Coordinator

Helena Harnik

Programmes Director

Gulwish Ahmed

Communications Assistant

Danielle Barron

Chief Editor, Motherhood Projects

Roxana Radu

Communications Manager

Lise Brooke

Growth Hacker

Diana Zaharia

Communications Manager

Our partners

They made all this possible

A total of 13 partners have decided to join forces to support and push forward our initiatives. This represents a major change in philosophy that has already started generating significant output on all projects.