Quality pre-service training forms the foundation of all nutrition services, equipping health professionals with the competencies required to deliver quality services from day one on the job. However, nutrition content is often outdated and can be difficult to integrate into pre-service training.

In an effort to improve the quality of nutrition services, USAID Advancing Nutrition developed the Tool and Guide for Reviewing the Nutrition Content of Pre-Service Training Curricula and tested it in Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Malawi. The tool can be used by academic institutions, relevant government entities, non-governmental organizations, and donors to help review and improve the nutrition content in existing pre-service training curricula for specific cadres of health workers who provide frontline nutrition services.

In this webinar experts from three countries discussed the challenges of integrating nutrition into pre-service training and their experiences using this tool to meet some of those challenges. Panelists also discussed how to advocate for improved nutrition content in pre-service training.

Webinar Recording

Webinar Resources

• Access the slide deck (PDF, 1.97 MB)
• View the webinar transcript in English (PDF, 267 KB)
• View the webinar transcript in Russian (PDF, 490.38 KB)
• View the webinar transcript in French (PDF, 273.7 KB)

Speakers

• Sascha Lamstein (moderator) is a senior nutrition technical advisor with USAID Advancing Nutrition, leading efforts to strengthen the delivery of nutrition services through the revision of preservice training, the use of digital tools, and the strategic selection and adaptation of service delivery packages. She has over twenty years of experience working in more than fifteen countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Sascha has worked
  in administrative, financial, technical, and management positions, and assisted and/or was responsible for
  strategic planning, program design, training, monitoring and evaluation, and data analysis. Her specialties
  include maternal and child health, nutrition, social and behavior change communication, and monitoring and evaluation. Prior to joining USAID Advancing Nutrition, under the USAID-funded SPRING project, she led efforts to promote systems thinking for nutrition, co-led SPRING’s evaluation of the community infant and young child feeding counseling package in Nigeria, and advocated for increased attention to adolescent girls’ nutrition.
• Ann Miceli is a capacity strengthening technical director with USAID Advancing Nutrition. Ann has led the capacity strengthening work on the project since 2019, working to strengthen approaches to strategic planning, organizational development, training and mentoring for USAID and other partners. Prior to her work with USAID Advancing Nutrition, she worked with a range of international and local organizations to design strategic conversations, organizational development programs and capacity strengthening initiatives in the fields of nutrition, food security and global health across both humanitarian and development contexts, supporting strategic conversations and organizational change in field-based programs across Africa and the Middle East.
• Katie Beck is a capacity strengthening technical advisor with USAID Advancing Nutrition, where works on a range of capacity strengthening activities, including training, learning, and mentoring programs and interventions to strengthen nutrition and early childhood development integration into health systems. Prior to joining USAID Advancing Nutrition, she lived in Rwanda for 5 years working for Partners In Health where she led the nutrition program team in the design of capacity strengthening activities to improve the quality of programs to detect and manage acute malnutrition in infants and children and support the Ministry of Health to integrate nutrition across multi-sectoral platforms. Katie is also a Registered Dietitian and has worked in different clinical settings.
• Katherine Owens is a health science specialist in the Office of Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition at the USAID Bureau for Global Health. She was most recently the team leader for the Family Health (MCH, Nutrition, WASH, Gender and Family Planning programming) and the HIV/TB Teams (PEPFAR and TB Accelerator programs) at the USAID/Uganda mission. Prior to this, Katherine was posted in USAID/Tajikistan as the health director, managing programs in TB, HIV, MCH, Nutrition, and COVID. Katherine has been a registered dietitian for the past twenty-three years, with experience in clinical care and dietetics in HIV/AIDS, international public health, community health, food management, food/water safety, hygiene/sanitation, and public policy. Katherine’s career also includes experience as a nutrition officer in the US Army, as the director of nutrition for the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and as a senior public health advisor with the US Department of State in Iraq.
• Tursun Mamyrabaeva is a consultant from the Kyrgyz Republic with over forty years of experience in health care as a physician, along with academic experience in pediatric nutrition. She has studied immunology of chronic viral hepatitis (1985- 1989) and holds a PHD (1999-2002) in malnutrition of children up to 3 years old. She has experience in research, analysis, and development of strategic documents, which includes work with  state programs to improve nutrition of the population, and drafting laws of the Kyrgyz Republic. Currently, Tursun works as a professor at the Kyrgyz State Medical Academy.
• Veronica Quartey is the deputy director for nutrition with the Family Health Division of the Ghana Health Service. Veronica has over thirty years of experience working in the field of nutrition. She has worked at all levels of the health sector in Ghana in various capacities with a special interest in maternal and child health, and has contributed to the development of many training manuals for nutrition in Ghana. She was a lecturer in nutrition at the College of Health and Wellbeing in Ghana for more than ten years and enjoys sharing and passing on knowledge and skills. Before her current appointment, Veronica was the programme coordinator for the Micronutrient deficiency control programme in Ghana and is a key contributor to the success of the Girls Iron and Folate Tablet Supplementation Programme in Ghana.
• Dorothy Matiki Chizimba is the director of education and training with the Nurses and Midwives Council of Malawi. Dorothy is also a registered nurse midwife and an experienced Educator. She has MSc. In Nursing and Midwifery Education and over ten years of experience in management and administration of training institutions, curriculum planning, implementation, and evaluation. Her specialties include development of test items, clinical assessment, and learner centered approaches of curriculum implementation.