Global Development Alliances (GDAs) are USAID’s premiere model for public private partnerships, helping to improve the social and economic conditions in developing countries and deepen USAID’s development impact. Survive and Thrive built on the award-winning Helping Babies Breathe GDA which clearly demonstrated that this was an effective model for rapid global rollout of a health intervention. USAID and partners expanded the scope and membership of the partnership, Survive & Thrive, to include maternal, newborn, and child health interventions with even greater potential for contributing to the global goal of ending preventable newborn, child and maternal deaths.
The partnership enabled several professional associations, NGOs, and the private sector to come together and leverage assets, technical expertise, influence and program platforms, exemplifying the power of partnership. The partnership leveraged a total of $120 million during 2010 – 2017 mobilized highly skilled volunteers from U.S. medical professional associations and NGOs to train, mentor, and develop educational materials; empowered national professional associations; and catalyzed the private sector to conduct research and develop innovative equipment appropriate for low-resource setting. The implementing partners supported countries to scale up these materials and innovations to strengthen national programs. The development
and roll-out of a transformative training methodology that integrated simplified simulation-based training packages with quality improvement processes and lowdose, high-frequency practice drills has been institutionalized and firmly embedded in many national programs.