With WK “Big Kenny” Alphin and Dr. Randy Wykoff, I am launching #Conversation2015, a look at the opportunities we have to make dramatic changes through compassion and caring. Read the introduction to the project here and the overview of children here. Then join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook: #Conversation2015

Over six million children die per year before they reach their fifth birthday, which is over 750 children per hour. And half of these deaths are preventable – and cheaply preventable. They include pneumonia, for which we need generic antibiotics, diarrhea due to unclean water, malaria preventable by mosquito nets, and measles for which we have a vaccination that costs $1.

Half of the over six million children who die every year are dying not because they have diseases that can’t be cured or prevented, but because they have diseases that we are not curing and preventing.

Then consider statistics on maternal and newborn health. Hope Through Healing Hands is leading an awareness and advocacy initiative to promote education and action for maternal and child health, with a special emphasis on healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies.

Healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies saves lives. We know that if young women in developing countries delay their first pregnancy until they are 20-24 years old, they are 10-14 times more likely to survive than those who have babies when they are younger.

If these women are able to space their children every three years, their newborns are twice as likely to survive their first year.