Every year, millions of newborns die within the first weeks of life, many from preventable causes after they leave the hospital. Connect Kangaroo Mother Care closes that post-discharge gap, sending trained Frontline Workers into homes to support families of small and vulnerable newborns.
Strengthening care for newborns beyond the facility
An estimated 2.3 million newborns die during the first 28 days of life each year, nearly half of all deaths in children under five. Most are babies born too small or too early: 80% have a low birth weight and two-thirds are born preterm.
Hospitals provide essential care in the first days after birth, but many families are discharged within a few days and return home with little structured follow-up. For parents of small and vulnerable newborns, that transition can be overwhelming. Without postnatal visits or ongoing guidance, caregivers are left to manage feeding, temperature regulation, and infection prevention on their own.
This post-discharge gap is one of the hardest problems in newborn health, and one that community-based programs are well placed to close. Evidence shows that stronger follow-up care at home can prevent many of the deaths that happen after discharge.
Why Kangaroo Mother Care matters
One of the most proven ways to protect small and vulnerable newborns is Kangaroo Mother Care: continuous skin-to-skin contact, exclusive breastfeeding, and early discharge paired with close follow-up for both mother and baby.
Kangaroo Mother Care can reduce neonatal mortality by up to 40%.
Compared with conventional care, it also lowers infection rates and increases exclusive breastfeeding. The World Health Organization recommends it for every newborn weighing 2,000 grams or less at birth. Yet coverage remains below 5% of eligible infants, a wide gap where scaling up could save lives.
Introducing the Connect Kangaroo Mother Care program
Connect Kangaroo Mother Care strengthens post-discharge care through structured home visits delivered by trained Frontline Workers, so families receive consistent, high-quality support during the critical early weeks.
The program runs on Connect, a platform that delivers high-impact services through pay-per-service contracts with local organizations. Frontline Workers are guided through standardized counseling, screening, and referral activities, and are paid on verified completion of each visit. Before delivering the intervention, every worker completes mandatory digital training and must pass an in-app assessment. From there the app guides them step by step, acting as both a job aid and a data-entry tool, capturing GPS and time stamps so each service is verified at the right place and time.
How the program works
Locally led organizations partner with health facilities to identify preterm or low-birth-weight newborns. Before discharge, Frontline Workers meet caregivers, explain Kangaroo Mother Care, and invite them to enroll. After discharge, the visits move to the family’s home:
- Counseling on skin-to-skin care and breastfeeding, using a Kangaroo Mother Care wrap the program provides.
- Screening for danger signs with a weighing scale, measuring tape, pulse oximeter, and thermometer. Warning signs such as poor weight gain, low body temperature, or infection are flagged in the app.
- Referral to a health facility when an issue cannot be resolved during the visit. The app automatically prompts a follow-up at the next visit, closing the loop.
- Emotional and social support for mothers, many of whom face stigma and isolation.
Strengthening the continuum of newborn care
Connect Kangaroo Mother Care aligns with global priorities in the World Health Organization’s position paper on Kangaroo Mother Care and the Every Newborn Action Plan, and it supports Sustainable Development Goal 3.2, which calls for fewer than 12 neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births by 2030.
With support, we can give a Frontline Worker the training, tools, and fair pay needed to deliver this care to more vulnerable newborns and their mothers. You can help fund a Frontline Worker today.