This brief provides an overview of policies and initiatives driving global action to reduce the impacts of childhood pneumonia and diarrheal disease—two dire but often under-resourced global health issues—in the context of broader priorities for global child health.

This landscape analysis is designed to help donors and global advocates better understand and engage in implementation of the Integrated Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhea (GAPPD) in the context of related policies and initiatives. Released in April 2013, the GAPPD does not call on governments to develop new strategies to combat diarrhea and pneumonia, but rather it identifies the specific interventions that must be prioritized and funded under existing child health strategies to improve mortality rates. The list of policies and initiatives addressed here is not exhaustive. The brief was developed to complement the GAPPD and, therefore, does not include specific strategies to address preterm birth complications—now the second-leading cause of childhood death—or malaria, another major cause of death among children under five years old.

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