ABSTRACT
The enormity of the health and economic challenges from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) is now being understood as evidenced by the adoption of the Political Declaration on NCDs at the high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2011. In addition, NCDs, particularly diabetes, obesity, and hypertension, have significant adverse impacts on maternal health and pregnancy outcomes, and through intrauterine programming, the cycle of vulnerability to NCDs is repeated with increasing risk accumulation in subsequent generations. To improve both the short-term maternal and child health (MCH) outcomes and the long-term population health, NCDs must be addressed simultaneously alongside MCH. There is a great need to carry out operational research to understand the facilitators and barriers to an integrated health system response to jointly address the challenge of improving maternal health and addressing prevention of NCDs and developing scalable programs in real-life settings.
