Keith-Brown, Kimberli. 2005. Investing for Life: Making the Link between Public Spending and the Reduction of Maternal Mortality. Mexico City, Mexico: Fundar Center for Analysis and Research.

Keith-Brown, Kimberli. 2005. Investing for Life: Making the Link between Public Spending and the Reduction of Maternal Mortality. Mexico City, Mexico: Fundar Center for Analysis and Research. 39p. http://www. internationalbudget.org/Investingforlife.pdf

The report Investing for Life: Making the Link between Public Spending and the Reduction of Maternal Mortality captures the dialogue that took place at a 3-day meeting in November 2004, where a small group of maternal health and budget advocates and researchers met in Mexico City to explore the potential for using budget analysis to strengthen civil society efforts to reduce maternal mortality. Civil society budget work aims to understand, analyse and influence government budgets, paying particular attention to transparency, social justice and inclusive budgeting. The meeting took the form of a dialogue aimed at building the understanding of the two fields and looking at the possibility of developing a strategic, mutually beneficial alliance. The overarching intention of the report is to broaden the discussion and provide guidelines for other activists looking for new strategies to reduce maternal mortality. The report addresses the possibilities for combining the long-standing experience of the maternal health community with the analytical approaches used in applied budget work.

After the Executive Summary and the Introduction, the third section introduces the field of maternal mortality, addressing major policy issues, approaches for reducing maternal mortality, along with international conventions and commitments on the issue. The fourth section, Applied Budget Analysis, describes the growth of this field, the types of organisations that specialise in this area and the goals and methods that define this work. The fifth section is especially interesting in that three challenges to reducing maternal mortality are outlined: 1) human and infrastructure resources required for skilled care; 2) equity in access to services; and 3) effective and efficient service delivery. Each challenge is followed by a description of how budget analysis can be used to address maternal mortality challenges. The final section, New Strategies and Perspectives, delves further into the challenges, strategic choices and linkages associated with bringing the maternal health and civil society budget analysis fields together.