In 2010 Ban Ki-moon launched his Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health Every Woman Every Child. After a decade of campaigning by public-health scientists and civil society organisations maternal newborn and child survival had finally been embraced as an emergency that demands unprecedented international action. The health of the child and mother had already been expressed in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)4 and 5 respectively. But until 2010 these goals had been in the shadow of their more fashionable close relation MDG 6 (covering AIDS tuberculosis and malaria). Yet even within the continuum of care across the mother and child there was one further neglected dimension - reproductive health which had been excluded from the MDGs when they were first inaugurated in 2000.... We see at least two challenges ahead. First countries and the global community need the political will and capacity to apply the best available evidence to inform and en courage policymakers to take family planning more seriously. That means addressing often large variations in know ledge about family planning within countries and the sometimes strong sociocultural barriers to its delivery that exist. Second there need to be national and global commitments to ensure that the evidence we present here is translated into innovative interventions which are in turn effectively implemented to achieve the goal of universal access to reproductive health. If these twin challenges can be met-using in part the potentially powerful idea of independent accountability-then a judicious fusion of science and advocacy will have been achieved. (excerpt)