Maternal & Child Health

The Working Group focuses on two priority areas of profound global significance: Childhood and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) and Inclusive Early Childhood Development (IECD). Both stand at the frontier of global health policy. NCDs, long viewed as diseases of adulthood, increasingly have their origins in childhood and adolescence through the life-course accumulation of risk, undernutrition and overnutrition, environmental exposures, and gaps in early detection and care. With NCDs now the leading cause of death and disability worldwide, and low- and middle-income countries bearing a disproportionate share of this burden, addressing NCDs from the earliest years of life is one of the most consequential and underinvested opportunities in global health. Equally, science is unequivocal that the first years of life shape lifelong health, learning, and productivity. Yet millions of children, particularly those affected by poverty, disability, and social exclusion, remain at risk of not reaching their developmental potential. Inclusive early childhood development is therefore not only a health imperative but a foundation for human capital, social cohesion, and intergenerational equity.

These two agendas sit at the intersection of health equity, health security, and societal wellbeing. Investments in early childhood and in preventing childhood NCDs reduce inequities before they harden, build resilient populations and health systems better able to withstand future shocks, and yield among the highest social and economic returns of any public investment. Progress on both is essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and to realizing the promise of universal health coverage.

The Working Group is built on a distinctive premise: that the depth of expertise, implementation experience, and innovation from India and the wider Indian subcontinent, home to the largest cohort of children in the world and to some of the most ambitious maternal and child health programs ever undertaken can be combined with the global academic networks, convening power, and scientific resources of the WHS Academic Alliance. This synergy creates a rare opportunity: lessons generated at unmatched scale and diversity in the subcontinent can be rigorously synthesized, tested, and translated for global application, while international evidence and expertise can strengthen policy and health systems in India. The result is a two-way exchange with the potential to shape maternal and child health agendas across the Global South and to accelerate global progress on childhood NCDs and inclusive early childhood development.