Nutrition Specific

Scaling up breastfeeding programmes in a complex adaptive world. The 2016 Breastfeeding Lancet Series continues to provide unequivocal evidence regarding the numerous benefits that optimal breastfeeding practices offer to children and women worldwide and the major savings that improving these practices can have as a result of their major public health benefits. Unfortunately, this knowledge […]

Achieving behaviour change at scale: Alive & Thrive’s infant and young child feeding programme in Bangladesh. The Alive & Thrive programme scaled up infant and young child feeding interventions in Bangladesh from 2010 to 2014. In all, 8.5 million mothers benefited. Approaches - including improved counselling by frontline health workers during home visits; community mobilization; […]

A Delivery Model for Home Fortification of Complementary Foods with Micronutrient Powders: Innovation in the Context of Vietnamese Health System Strengthening. Adding micronutrient powders (MNP) to complementary foods at the point of preparation (home fortification) can improve micronutrient status of young children. Ensuring sustained access to MNPs at scale, however, remains challenging in many countries. […]

Challenges in Implementing the Integrated Community-Based Outpatient Therapeutic Program for Severely Malnourished Children in Rural Southern Ethiopia. Currently, treatment of uncomplicated severe acute malnutrition is managed in the integrated Community based Outpatient Therapeutic Program (C-OTP) using ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTFs). The aim of this study was to determine challenges in implementing the critical steps in […]

The scope and practice of behaviour change communication to improve infant and young child feeding in low- and middle-income countries: results of a practitioner study in international development organizations. We describe features of the landscape of behaviour change communication (BCC) practice devoted to infant and young child feeding (IYCF) in low- and middle-income countries by […]

Role of Social Support in Improving Infant Feeding Practices in Western Kenya: A Quasi-Experimental Study. BACKGROUND: We designed and tested an intervention that used dialogue-based groups to engage infants’ fathers and grandmothers to support optimal infant feeding practices. The study’s aim was to test the effectiveness of increased social support by key household influencers on improving […]

Translating formative research findings into a behaviour change strategy to promote antenatal calcium and iron and folic acid supplementation in western Kenya. The World Health Organization now recommends integrating calcium supplements into antenatal micronutrient supplementation programmes to prevent pre-eclampsia, a leading cause of maternal mortality. As countries consider integrating calcium supplementation into antenatal care (ANC), […]

Stability of Vitamin A, Iron and Zinc in Fortified Rice during Storage and Its Impact on Future National Standards and Programs-Case Study in Cambodia. Fortified rice holds great potential for bringing essential micronutrients to a large part of the world population. The present study quantified the losses of three different micronutrients (vitamin A, iron, zinc) […]

Public sector scale-up of zinc and ORS improves coverage in selected districts in Bihar, India. BACKGROUND: In Bihar, India, a new initiative to enhance diarrhea treatment with zinc and ORS in the public sector was rolled out in selected districts. We conducted an external evaluation to measure changes in diarrhea careseeking and treatment in intervention […]

Role of Protein and Amino Acids in Infant and Young Child Nutrition: Considerations for the Development and Delivery of High Quality Complementary Food Supplements. Prevention of malnutrition in infants and children is multifaceted and requires the following: access to and intake of nutritious food starting at birth with exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 mo […]