In 2016, the IDEAS project entered a second phase of work, building on lessons learned from phase one. Five key research themes were identified:

1. Research to track progress in maternal and newborn health in a setting where multiple actors formed a partnership to address health system building blocks, aiming to understand how demand and supply side actions worked together to improve outcomes.

2. Research to improve the measurement of priority indicators for maternal and newborn health, aiming to address the challenges in measuring some of the actions that save maternal and newborn lives, which make it difficult to track progress.

3. Research to understand how to foster innovation sustainability, aiming to address the problem that effective interventions often last only as long as
donor funding is available.

4. Research on how best to support local decision-making, aiming to address the problem of limited capacity to synthesise and use data for decision-making.

5. Research on understanding quality improvement, aiming to generate new evidence that explains the mechanisms through which quality improvement
in the health sector operates. This report outlines this body of work and highlights key findings.

We hope you enjoy reading it.