Episode Details

Executive Summary

Newborns born too small or too soon (vulnerable) account for 70% of the world's 2 million newborn deaths every year, despite representing just 15% of births. Kangaroo Care, a practice of skin to skin care and exclusive breastfeeding, is proven to reduce mortality among vulnerable newborns by a third compared to conventional care. Despite WHO recommendation, only 5% of eligible newborns receive it.
First Embrace was incubated in the Ambitious Impact program in late 2025 to minimise newborn deaths by scaling Kangaroo Care. One in every ten newborn deaths is in Nigeria, where we work.

In our first year we evaluated two key questions:

1. Can we cost-effectively deliver Kangaroo Care in a high-burden Nigerian public hospital?
2. Can government partnership provide evidence of a path from policy on paper to implementation at scale?
    

ReachWe have been delivering Kangaroo Care at our pilot hospital since February 2026. By June we enrolled 320 newborns and delivered Kangaroo Care to 301 of them.ImpactWe conservatively estimate that our program counterfactually saves 43 lives per year for $4,378 per life saved. At regional scale we estimate this drops to $3,711.
During the pilot our program saved 14 lives. 

GiveWell estimates the [...]

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Outline:

(00:24) Executive Summary

(02:31) 1. The Problem

(03:23) 2. The Solution

(05:40) 3. Our Approach

(07:31) 4. Results

(07:52) 4.1. Baseline Neonatal Mortality

(09:25) 4.2. Outcome

(11:39) 4.3. Cost-effectiveness

(13:43) 5. Implementation Lessons

(15:14) 6. Plans

(15:17) Improvement

(18:31) Evaluation

(19:12) Partnerships

(19:37) 7. Team

(20:27) 8. Funding

(21:04) Thank you

(21:34) Appendix A: Implementation model in detail

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First published:
July 29th, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wGXCuedzsubqNDAca/introducing-first-embrace-an-ambitious-impact-incubated

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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