Editorial: Dialogues on preterm birth-causes and consequences, prevention and mitigation.

Birth before 37 completed weeks gestation (Preterm birth, PTB), affects approximately 13.4 million 1 newborns globally. The prevalence is even greater (~35.3 million) when small and vulnerable newborns 2 (SVN) -infants born small for gestational age and/or preterm -are considered. The global burden of PTB 3 varies regionally and is disproportionately concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (Lawn et al., 4 2023, World Health Organization, 2023a). These regions also have the highest rates of infant mortality 5 (United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, 2021), as more than half of neonatal 6 deaths are attributable to SVN (Lawn et al., 2023)