Shedding light on issues ranging from childhood survival to educational attainment and exposure to violence, a global dashboard will help policymakers, the health community and the public track progress on some of the critical factors influencing children’s health and their futures.
Currently, 4.9 million children aged under 5 years die every year, with nearly half of these babies in their very first month of life. Based on current trends, 59 countries will miss the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target for under-5 deaths. During the 77th World Health Assembly, noting these statistics, countries committed to accelerate actions to improve maternal and child health and survival (Resolution WHA 77/5).
Data is critical for these efforts, helping countries monitor impacts of programmes and policies and guiding interventions to address gaps. In line with these goals, the updated Child Health and Well-being Dashboard aims to capture progress against several core indicators, grouped within four key domains:
- Survival indicators track mortality through infancy, childhood and adolescence.
- Developmental indicators track breastfeeding rates in infancy, early years of physical and emotional development, and learning outcomes at school.
- Protection indicators track exposure to violence and child labour, maternity protections, and prevention of inappropriate marketing of formula milk products.
- Participation indicators track appropriate care-seeking behaviour (e.g., parents seeking medical attention when their child has a high fever), birth registration, and school attendance and completion.
- Supporting contextual and policy indicators track poverty levels and food security, as well as environmental factors like sanitation, emissions and pollution.
The Dashboard contains data from 196 countries and territories around the world. In addition to country-specific data, it also enables global analysis of factors that influence children’s health, and identify areas that may need attention within international forums and policies. For instance, of 196 countries, the indicator that the largest number of countries (144) are struggling with is maternity protections, which are essential for supporting the mental and physical health of women and babies during pregnancy and after birth.
The World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Children in All Policies (CAP-2030) initiative originally launched the Child Health and Wellbeing Dashboard in May 2022, aiming to provide national policymakers with a data-based tool to help guide health programmes, policy development and evaluation.
The updated version includes the latest data, downloadable datasets and a more user-friendly interface, as requested by policymakers, academics and civil society stakeholders during a Town Hall Event in May 2023.
Indicators were chosen through a prioritization exercise aligned with the SDG Framework, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and other related policy commitments to children’s health and development.
The updated dashboard is available now on the WHO, UNICEF and CAP-2030 websites.
