The National Family Health Survey-5 has reported an under-five mortality rate of 41.9 per 1000 live births in India. Pneumonia, one of the leading causes of under-five mortality, contributes substantially to this figure. The Indian government has made efforts through multiple national programmes, but pneumonia-specific mortality remains high. The Government of India revised their Childhood Pneumonia Management Guidelines in 2019 to improve under-five pneumonia prevention and management. This implementation study aims to achieve a high population-based coverage of pneumonia treatment for under 5 yearold children in the Palwal district of India.

This implementation study uses a quasi-experimental pre-post design and a mixed-methods approach, conducted in three phases: (i) formative research, (ii) model optimisation through iterative testing in a learning block and (iii) scale-up and concurrent evaluation. The study is set in Palwal district, Haryana, and the primary catchment/study area will be the Health and Wellness Centres, the most accessible public health facilities for the community. Approximately 4167 households will be surveyed to capture ~2400 under-five children, among whom about 120 pneumonia cases (based on an estimated 5% prevalence) will be included in the analysis of treatment coverage and outcomes. Quantitative data will be analysed using descriptive statistics and generalised linear models, while qualitative data from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews will be thematically analysed using NVivo software.

Ethical approval was granted by the ethical committees of the Society for Applied Studies (ERC/IR Pneumonia/2021), the Regional Ethics Committee of Western Norway (2022/531608) and the WHO(ERC.0003652). Additionally, this study has obtained the Government of Haryana state (Memo no. HSHRC/2022/505) and Health Ministry steering committee (approval date: 19 Dec 2022, proposal id 2022–17596) approvals. Informed consent will be obtained from all participants, including caregivers and healthcare workers, prior to data collection. Dissemination meetings in the study country will share results with stakeholders, including Ministry of Health officials, health managers, families of under-five children, community leaders and academia, to discuss national health programme implications. Results will also be shared regionally and globally, with publications and presentations encouraged in national and international forums.

Clinical Trials Registry – India, CTRI/2021/03/031622.

The WHO’s Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) in young infants

We will create a dataset that integrates data from population-based studies globally with similar designs that have examined the presence of signs of PSBI identified by frontline health workers throughout the young infant period (days 0 to

All prior studies incorporated into our pooled analysis were approved by the independent local ethics committee/institutional review board (IRB) at each study site in each country, and all study participants provided informed consent. This project was approved by the Stanford University School of Medicine IRB protocol 74456. Study findings will be disseminated through publications in peer-reviewed journals, WHO documents, and presentations at maternal and child health meetings.