Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health

Through our Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health program, we aim to have a meaningful impact on the lives of mothers, families, children and adolescents – through a focus on the three areas of survive, thrive and transform.

Burnet is committing to making a major contribution to:

- Improving reproductive health, with a focus on pre-conception health
- Reducing maternal and newborn mortality, and prevention of other adverse pregnancy outcomes
- Reducing preventable causes of morbidity and mortality of children, and optimising growth and development
- Advancement of gender equality, and prevention of gender-based violence
- Increasing the capacity of health professionals, researchers, policy makers and the general community in maternal and child health, through education and training in Australia and globally.

We’re working to reduce maternal mortality, stillbirths, neonatal deaths, and child and adolescent deaths, by focusing on what we know contributes to women dying in childbirth – postpartum haemorrhage, pre-eclampsia, infections – as well as infectious diseases like malaria and HIV.

It’s not enough for mothers, babies and children just to survive, we want them to thrive, and our vision for achieving this is through sexual reproductive health and rights. We’re committed to improving menstrual health for people in all countries. We also want to address low birth weight, stunting, mental health and immunisation. 

We’re working with our key partners across the Asia-Pacific region, and engaging directly with communities, to transform and strengthen health systems. We want our work to contribute to policy development that will transform the lives of mothers, children and adolescents everywhere.