USAID Advancing Nutrition develops, curates, packages, and shares multi-sectoral nutrition knowledge to help you stay on top of developments and evidence in global nutrition programming.
Rapid Evidence Assessment on Women’s Empowerment Interventions within the Food System: A Meta-Analysis
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Social and Behavior Change and GenderAdolescent NutritionChild NutritionGenderMaternal Nutrition
Empowerment interventions improved food security, affordability, and availability while impacts on anthropometrics and diet quality and adequacy were smaller. Multi-component interventions combining a livelihoods component with behavioral change communication appear to be more sustainable than single-focus interventions.
Effects of Engaging Fathers and Bundling Nutrition and Parenting Interventions on Household Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Rural Tanzania: Results from EFFECTS, a Five-Arm Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial
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Social and Behavior Change and GenderChild NutritionGenderMaternal Nutrition
Engaging fathers and bundling nutrition and parenting programs in Tanzania advanced both gender equality and women’s empowerment more than when community health workers only targeted women.
Mothers’ Experience Survey: Improving Newborn Care
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Nutrition and Health SystemsBreastfeeding
Survey findings showed that prolonged skin-to-skin contact almost doubled, and breastfeeding counseling increased to almost 100 percent. Findings have led to stronger enforcement of the national Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitute products.
Improving Maternal and Newborn Health and Survival and Reducing Stillbirth— Progress Report 2023
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Nutrition and Health SystemsBreastfeedingCOVID-19GenderMaternal Nutrition
The report highlights global progress on maternal mortality, neonatal mortality, and stillbirths and presents country efforts to meet global targets. Priority actions include encouraging greater investment, political commitment, and community engagement; strengthening service delivery for quality and respectful care; and building stronger data and information systems.
Focusing on Multiple Micronutrient Supplements in Pregnancy: Second Edition
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Nutrition and Health SystemsAnemiaEmergency NutritionMaternal NutritionMicronutrient Interventions
Articles discuss the benefits of prenatal multiple micronutrient supplements, barriers and enablers to uptake, supplement delivery in humanitarian contexts, accelerating supply to meet future demand, social marketing approaches, the importance of partnerships and fostering an enabling environment, and the impacts of scaling on human capital outcomes, among other topics.
Effect of Enhanced Nutrition Services with Community‐Based Nutrition Services on the Diet Quality of Young Children in Ethiopia
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Nutrition and Health SystemsWastingChild NutritionComplementary FeedingGenderGrowth Monitoring and PromotionInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)Micronutrient InterventionsNutrition Assessment, Counseling, and Support (NACS)Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture
The multi-sectoral Sustainable Undernutrition Reduction in Ethiopia intervention produced significant improvements in almost all aspects of infant and young child feeding practices.
Building the Competency of Health Professionals in the Kyrgyz Republic for the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative
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Nutrition and Health SystemsBreastfeedingCOVID-19
In the Kyrgyz Republic, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the implementation of the updated Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative policy and guidance. Gaps in prioritizing, funding, and monitoring breastfeeding counseling and supporting competency building remain. Multi-sectoral advocacy to secure greater commitment and funding within and beyond the health system is critical.
How Countries Can Reduce Anemia among Women of Reproductive Age: Lessons from Exemplar Countries
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Monitoring, Evaluation, and LearningAnemia
Panelists identify consistent drivers of anemia reduction across geographies and context-specific multi-sectoral interventions and present case studies from two countries. This is a webinar.
WHO Calls for Accelerated Action to Reduce Anaemia
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Monitoring, Evaluation, and LearningAdolescent NutritionAnemiaChild NutritionMaternal NutritionMicronutrient Interventions
The World Health Organization anemia framework consolidates evidence, identifies ways to address the direct causes, risk factors, and broad social inequities that are fundamental drivers of anemia, and identifies key action areas for various actors to improve coverage and uptake of interventions.
This newly updated toolkit provides resources to improve the understanding of the facets of anemia, its nature, significance, assessment, prevention and control. It includes resources pertaining to anemia causation and its assessment, tools for strategic intervention, and needs for further investigation.
A Simple Fruit and Vegetable Score is a Valid Tool to Assess Actual Fruit and Vegetable Intake
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Monitoring, Evaluation, and LearningNutrition Sensitive Agriculture
The Diet Quality Questionnaire is a low-burden, low-cost, and simple tool to calculate the fruit and vegetable component of the Global Dietary Recommendation score and to monitor fruit and vegetable consumption at the population level. This article is behind a paywall.
Knowledge ManagementWastingBreastfeedingChild NutritionComplementary FeedingEmergency NutritionFood SafetyFood SystemsGenderInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)Maternal NutritionResilienceWater, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
Future investments should include strengthening nutrition as part of primary health care, identifying pathways through which food systems most effectively and efficiently prevent child wasting, improving access to ready-to-use therapeutic food for treatment and specialized nutritious food (SNF) for prevention, supporting the development of sustainable financing strategies for health systems and
Nurturing Young Children through Responsive Feeding
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Knowledge ManagementChild NutritionComplementary FeedingInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)Nutrition Assessment, Counseling, and Support (NACS)
Comprehensive counseling, and responsive feeding (RF) are an essential aspect of adequate nutrition and responsive caregiving. This brief describes how responsive feeding promotes positive caregiver-child interactions and early learning.
Key activities this year include engaging national actors to adopt and scale multiple micronutrient supplementation; raising awareness of women’s nutrition challenges; developing strategic partnerships and collaborations across maternal nutrition, health, and related fields; and expanding the consortium’s capacity, expertise, and reach.
Kuhn’s organization, Roots of Peace, has facilitated the removal of unexploded bombs and landmines; planted millions of grapevines and fruit trees; provided training for farmers; restored agricultural value chains; and rebuilt food systems, livelihoods, and communities in several war-torn countries.
What it Takes to Bounce Back from Severe Malnutrition: Albatoul’s Story
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Knowledge ManagementWastingGrowth Monitoring and Promotion
Aid workers reported increases in the number of women seeking care and treatment for their malnourished children and in ready-to-use therapeutic food refill requests. While they urge mothers to stick to a schedule during treatment and to bring their children back for follow-up to ensure a full recovery, they are fearful that critical supplies could be cut off.
Nutrition and Feeding of Children with Feeding Difficulties and Disabilities: Gaps, Progress, and Opportunities
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Knowledge ManagementBreastfeedingChild NutritionInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)
Supporting children with feeding difficulties and disabilities requires strengthening systems to improve the identification, early intervention, and inclusion of children with complex needs in primary health care services and expanding availability of specialized services. Provide support to families to address social determinants and raise awareness of the need and opportunities.
Research Findings on Resilience & Social Cohesion in Burkina Faso and Niger
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Food SystemsCOVID-19Food SystemsGenderResilience
Researchers discuss how multi-sectoral World Food Program interventions, partnerships, and collaborations have reduced tensions and improved social cohesion in fragile contexts. This is a webinar. It is in English with simultaneous interpretation into French.
Irregular Migration and Food Security: A View from West Africa
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Food SystemsEmergency NutritionFood Systems
Speakers discuss a mixed method, route-based study to look at migrant origins, their transit experience, and where their journey stalls or ends. They introduce an interactive website that illustrates the migrant journey and associated risks. This is a webinar.
Dietquality.org: New Data and Tools for 50+ Countries Unveiled
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Food SystemsFood Systems
The website presents new diet data and country-adapted data collection tools for 56 countries. It also offers an indicator calculator to help users analyze their own data. This is a webinar.