In its global health coordination role, the World Health Organization (WHO) highlights the vital challenges in the health of women and children, specifically maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH). The MNCH arena offers both preventive opportunities and challenges; successful programmatic models show immense promise for reducing disease and suffering in low and middle income countries (LMIC).

We welcome manuscript proposals from global health investigators working in Africa or Asia, including from the WHO itself, WHO contractors and grantees, and Ministry of Health employees whose work would be suitably highlighted within the special issue. We welcome both original and review articles from any investigators within the WHO sphere of influence focusing on MNCH work from low and middle income countries (LMICs) on these two continents. Both discovery science and implementation science can be considered. Program evaluations will be considered only if the program is innovative and rigorously evaluated with a reasonable approach for counterfactual comparison.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Innovative approaches in reproductive health service delivery
• Operational issues in family planning and birth spacing
• Emergency obstetric response programs
• Breastfeeding promotion
• Noncommunicable diseases and pregnancy in LMICs (e.g., gestational diabetes, maternal obesity, and tobacco use and its impact on pregnancy outcomes)
• Prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV/syphilis/HBV
• MNCH responses to the Ebola virus epidemic
• Tuberculosis in mothers and children
• Essential newborn care
• Innovative child survival initiatives
• Home and road traffic accidents
• Program evaluations of under-five survival initiatives
• Childhood nutrition programs in specific settings
• Water and sanitation programs targeting MNCH outcomes
• Trafficked youth and/or youth who are sexual minorities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer, and indeterminate)
• Point-of-care diagnostics of high priority for MNCH in Africa and Asia
• Other MNCH topics related to Africa/Asia