Advocacy
Strategic Pillars
Advocacy
Lasting improvements in health require effective interventions to be taken beyond individual programmes and embedded in policies, clinical standards, and health systems that can sustain them at scale. AMAN brings evidence, technical expertise, and diverse stakeholders together to strengthen policies, clinical standards, and health systems, helping proven interventions move from programme experience into routine practice. AMAN has played a longstanding role in shaping maternal and reproductive health policy and practice in Pakistan. It developed the Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) manual in collaboration with UNICEF and supported the creation of the Midwifery Association of Pakistan in collaboration with NCMNH, contributing to stronger professional structures and standards for maternal and newborn care. AMAN also played a leading role in advocating for the availability of magnesium sulphate in Pakistan for the prevention and treatment of eclampsia, helping advance access to a life-saving intervention for women with severe hypertensive complications of pregnancy. AMAN has also advocated for the integration of postpartum and post-abortion family planning into routine maternity services, promoted WHO-recommended safe uterine evacuation methods, and successfully advocated for the inclusion of Misoprostol in Pakistan’s Essential Medicines Lists and in the midwifery curriculum, strengthening access to an evidence-based intervention for reproductive health, including postpartum haemorrhage and post-abortion care.
AMAN’s advocacy has also contributed to the introduction of HPV vaccination in Pakistan and its inclusion in the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), helping translate a national commitment to cervical cancer prevention into a public health programme.
This work has helped strengthen the frameworks that guide health systems and healthcare providers, while generating evidence to inform national decision-making. AMAN led the quantitative and qualitative analysis for Pakistan’s Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Maternal Mortality Surveys in collaboration with NCMNH, including analysis of verbal autopsies. The findings provided important evidence and lessons to inform maternal health policies, priorities, and planning in Pakistan. Through the Pakistan Alliance for Post-Abortion Care (PAPAC), AMAN also brings together healthcare professionals, policymakers, academic institutions, and development partners to build consensus and advance improvements in post-abortion care policy, standards, and practice.
AMAN’s advocacy extends across maternal, newborn, adolescent, and reproductive health, including contraception, healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy, breast cancer, population health, gender equity, and cervical cancer prevention. The focus is not simply on advocating for individual interventions, but on helping create the policy, professional, and institutional conditions that allow effective approaches to be adopted, strengthened, and sustained.