Good nutrition during the first 1,000 days, from pregnancy until a child’s second birthday, is crucial for optimal child health and long-term development. As COVID-19 shuts down countries and misinformation spreads, it is imperative that sound research drives policy decisions and counters false information that threatens breastfeeding. To address these challenges, USAID Advancing Nutrition and UNICEF will co-lead a communications working group dedicated to translating findings from emerging and evolving research about infant feeding during the first 1,000 days.

The COVID-19 and Infant Feeding Communications Sub-Group will bring together experts in the field of infant and young child feeding to distill key messages as new evidence emerges. The group will focus on infant feeding questions and issues pertinent to health programs and public stakeholders such as healthcare professionals and associations, milk banks, program implementers, and civil society organizations. The group will develop communication materials and outputs for these key stakeholders and engage existing networks to disseminate information and outputs from the COVID-19 and Infant Feeding Technical and Research Collation subgroups.