How can we take the concept of locally led development beyond individual organizations and partners – and ultimately build a movement to improve maternal, newborn, and child health? How can a focus on supporting local and regional ecosystems enable engagement, cross-sharing, and accountability for sustained progress in quality service delivery?

In this last episode of our season focused on localization, Debrah Lewis–a midwife, co-founder of the Caribbean Regional Midwives Association, and consultant with UNFPA–joins us from Trinidad and Tobago, and Dr. Vaibhao Ambhore, Chief of Party of Saksham, a USAID-funded MNCH Accelerator project under the MOMENTUM umbrella, joins us from India.

They share concrete examples of taking local, community-informed ideas to scale. We hear about interventions that meet the intersectional needs of women and families, such as a program to address wage loss during pregnancy, and discuss the role that policy dialogue plays in creating systems-level progress for mothers and their babies.

Perinatal mental health (PMH) conditions, like postpartum depression and perinatal anxiety, can occur during pregnancy and up to two years after giving birth. But its impact on moms, infants, families, and communities can be felt far beyond that.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Prabha Chandra, a professor of perinatal psychiatry in India and co-chair of the global PMH Community of Practice, and Linos Muvhu, a passionate advocate for mental health support and founder of the Society for Pre and Post Natal Services' (SPANS), a maternal, paternal and child mental health program in Zimbabwe. We discuss the challenges of addressing PMH and why a "one-size-fits-all" approach doesn't work, and hear examples of successful PMH interventions from India and Zimbabwe.

Together, we explore the innovative partnerships and approaches that are turning a growing global movement to address PMH into real, locally driven, context-specific programs that address mental health and the overall health and well-being of women and their babies in a way that is tailored to each community's needs.

Co-creation and capacity strengthening are two concepts at the heart of localization efforts. But what do they mean to local experts, community members, and advocates? How can co-creation and capacity strengthening improve access to and quality of family planning and reproductive health needs?

In this episode, Isaac Ndaya, a private sector and public health expert at the Total Family Health Organization in Ghana, a partner of MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery; and Ragini Bordoloi, a MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership: India-Yash Youth Fellow and sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) youth advocate in India, speak about how locally-driven approaches can create contextual, effective solutions to meet family planning and sexual and reproductive health needs.

We hear about how approaches like peer-to-peer mentoring can strengthen capacity and create private sector partnerships to meet evolving family needs in the community. And we learn how meaningful co-creation, where local community members are not only involved but are leading program design efforts, can increase accessibility of SRHR knowledge and services.