This policy brief presents two key issues surrounding the issue of newborn health: one, investing in neonatal health services as an essential component of achieving health and development goals and two, the protection of newborns' human rights. The purpose of this policy brief is to help "stimulate new thinking among government decisionmakers and health care professionals."

This brief is the second in the Policy Perspectives on Newborn Health series, produced collaboratively by the Population Reference Bureau and Save the Children's Saving Newborn Lives initiative.

Newborns are vulnerable. They are "15 times more likely to die during the first month of life than at any other time during their first year." This document (and the series it is a part of) show how incorporating newborn care into existing safe motherhood and child survival programmes can ensure newborn survival.