Newborn and family-centered care: a scoping review on related newborn rights and principles

Background: Newborn- and family-centered care (N&FCC) is essential for improving newborn and parental outcomes, yet no previous review focused on related newborn rights and principles. In this scoping review, we aimed to identify and synthetise related rights of hospitalised newborns and principles of N&FCC enunciated in the literature, assess correspondence of rights with international human rights instruments, examine alignments between rights and principles, and identify gaps. Methods: We searched PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Google Scholar up to 20 August 2025 for records that explicitly described the rights of hospitalised newborns or articulated principles relevant to N&FCC. We thematically synthesised the identified rights and principles into overarching sets, assessed them for mutual alignment, and mapped rights to five fundamental international human rights instruments. Results: Twelve of the 13 447 retrieved records were eligible for inclusion. We identified 40 enunciated rights and 57 principles, with no single source providing a comprehensive list of either. Thematic analysis yielded 12 overarching sets of rights and 6 overarching sets of principles which showed substantial mutual alignment. Each set of rights was supported by two or more international human rights instruments. The analysis of principles enunciated so far in the literature highlighted that newborns are not always explicitly identified as the intended subject of N&FCC. Newborn rights and N&FCC principles were predominantly developed by groups/initiatives in high income countries. Conclusions: This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of newborn rights and N&FCC principles, demonstrating correspondence between newborn rights and international human rights law instruments, and alignment between rights and principles, thereby strengthening conceptual foundations of N&FCC. Our findings suggest that N&FCC should be considered a rights-based entitlement of hospitalised newborns, rather than solely a model of care. Future work should clarify the intended focus of N&FCC, examine mechanism for translating newborn rights into standards of care, and involve stakeholders from both high- and low- and middle-income countries to support its wider implementation.