Community Empowerment Lab: Making Lifesaving Newborn Care Routine in Public Health Systems

This case study examines how Community Empowerment Lab (CEL) worked with the Government of India to scale Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) for vulnerable newborns through the KMC Lounge Ecosystem. The resource highlights how CEL transformed a proven but underutilized intervention into a scalable, government-owned public health model by redesigning facility spaces, workflows, staff training, coaching systems, and digital monitoring tools. The publication explores lessons on systems integration, government ownership, adaptive implementation, stakeholder-centered design, and embedding maternal-led care into routine public health delivery. It also demonstrates how low-cost innovations and district-level ownership enabled KMC adoption across hundreds of facilities while improving newborn survival and maternal experience. The resource provides practical insights for organizations working in maternal and newborn health, public health systems strengthening, healthcare delivery, and large-scale implementation within government systems.