From Commitment to Impact: Accelerating Global Progress Toward Sustainable Development Goal 3 in Maternal and Newborn Health

Maternal, perinatal, and neonatal mortality are the leading causes of maternal and neonatal deaths globally, driven in part, by preventable pregnancy-related complications, a growing burden of medical and surgical disorders during pregnancy, and both common and growing burden of complex fetal and neonatal conditions. Many of these conditions require timely access to emergency obstetric care, critical care services, and specialized interventions, including intensive care support and advanced fetal and neonatal therapies. However, access to these services remains limited in many settings globally. These treatment gaps are made worse by health system constraints, workforce shortages, referral related, inequitable resource distribution including negative impact of global warming on maternal and neonatal health. Limited access to safe abortion and post-abortion care also remains an important contributor to preventable maternal morbidity and mortality in many settings. Addressing these challenges through integrated, context-specific, and scalable solutions is essential to improving maternal and newborn outcomes and accelerating progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 3.1 and 3.2.

The persistent high global rate of maternal, perinatal, and neonatal mortality reflects major gaps in timely access to high-quality emergency, critical, and specialized care. Preventable pregnancy-related complications, medical and surgical disorders during pregnancy, and complex fetal and neonatal conditions continue to drive poor outcomes, while weak referral systems, limited intensive care capacity, workforce shortages, climate change and inequitable resource distribution delay life-saving treatment. Recent advances in maternal critical care, integrated maternal and perinatal care models, fetal diagnosis and therapy, minimally invasive fetal and neonatal surgery, and digital tools for triage, monitoring, and decision support offer important opportunities to improve survival and reduce disability and deaths. This Research Topic seeks articles that define the burden, examine barriers to care, and identify scalable, context-sensitive solutions to strengthen equitable access to emergency obstetric, critical care, fetal, and neonatal services across both resource-limited and well-resourced settings, including access to safe abortion and post-abortion care where relevant to maternal health outcomes.

This Research Topic focuses on advancing equitable access to high-quality maternal, perinatal, and neonatal care, with particular emphasis on the management of medical and surgical disorders during pregnancy, impact of climate change on maternal and neonatal health, management of pregnancy-related complications including complex fetal and neonatal conditions. We welcome contributions addressing emergency obstetric care, maternal and neonatal critical care (including ICU access), fetal diagnosis and therapy, fetal and neonatal surgery, climate change and maternal and neonatal health, and innovations in referral, transport, and care integration. We also welcome manuscripts addressing abortion-related care, particularly research on safe abortion access, post-abortion care, health system barriers, and their implications for maternal morbidity and mortality. Submissions exploring health system strengthening, workforce development, digital health, and implementation strategies to improve access and quality of care in both resource-limited and well-resourced settings are encouraged. We are particularly interested in context-specific, scalable solutions and policy-relevant research. Manuscript types include Original Research, Systematic Reviews (including scoping reviews), Meta-analyses, Policy Analyses, policy briefs, research Reports, and Perspectives.

We invite submissions of original research, systematic reviews, and perspectives that address the prevention, diagnosis, and management of these conditions, including research proposing innovative strategies to strengthen equitable access to emergency, critical, and specialized maternal and newborn care in different in both resourced and limited resource settings, as well as manuscripts examining the contribution of safe abortion access and post-abortion care to reducing preventable maternal mortality.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Maternal health, Neonatal health, Perinatal care, Pregnancy complications, Medical disorders in pregnancy, Surgical disorders in pregnancy, Critical care, Intensive care units, Fetal diagnosis, Fetal surgery, Neonatal surgery, Emergency obstetric care, Health systems strengthening, Equity in healthcare, Low- and middle-income countries

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.