Discourse, ideas and power in global health policy networks: political attention for maternal and child health in the millennium development goal era

French [63] provides proposes a contrary explanation for improvements in child mortality during the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era, attributing such reductions to coincidental economic growth during this time rather than the focusing power of global policy frameworks or even national public health expenditure. Critics, however, could rebut that while income is clearly a key determinant of household purchasing power of such things as nutritious food, mosquito nets and medicine, a confounding factor is that rising GDP often brings greater formal employment opportunities for women, which can exert a negative effect on mothers’ capacity to invest time in activities with proven child health benefits, such as antenatal and postnatal visits, breastfeeding, cooking healthy meals, collecting clean water and so on. As Murray [64] notes, the significant rise in Development Assistance for Health from USD11.6b in 2000 to USD33.1b in 2012 can be correlated with a strong emphasis on health in the MDGs, which itself had “broad societal appeal” (p.1391) and the capacity of influencing household investments.

“Political attention” is defined by Hafner and Shiffman [48]

as occurring when “leaders of organisations express concern about issues publicly and privately, and when they back up this concern by allocating resources.”