National social protection programs are defined as the set of public actions to fight poverty, and initiatives to expand them are one of the most important Sustainable Development Goals.

The article by Zhihui Li, Fernando Wehrmeister(from the Int’l Center for Equity in Health), and his collaborators shows that these programs play an important role in reducing child mortality.

In this article, they analysed child mortality data in 379 surveys in 101 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania.

Results show that the Social Protection and Labour Programs (SPL) are strongly associated with lower child mortality rates. Thus, the LMICs must prioritize the expansion of social protection programs as an effective strategy to reduce child mortality, as well as to combat poverty and inequities. Authors also suggest that the expansion of social protection programs must be based in discussions which take each country’s specificities into account.

Read the full article for methodological strategies and details about the results. It is available at the Journal of Global Health