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.
Food Marketing Exposure and Power and their Associations with Food-Related Attitudes, Beliefs and Behaviours: A Narrative Review
Publication Date:
Social and Behavior Change and GenderFood Safety
Marketing of unhealthy foods remains pervasive. This review adds evidence and perspectives on contemporary marketing. Authors provide evidence that supports action to restrict marketing to which children are exposed.
Focusing on Social Norms: A Practical Guide for Nutrition Programmers to Improve Women’s and Children’s Diets
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Social and Behavior Change and GenderInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)Maternal Nutrition
This guide is for program planners and implementers developing norms-responsive activities within nutrition-sensitive or nutrition-specific programming. It includes tips and tools to improve program outcomes by understanding and responding to social norms and incorporates background on how to identify norms and monitor and measure change.
Maternal and Paternal Involvement in Complementary Feeding in Kaduna State, Nigeria: The Continuum of Gender Roles in Urban and Rural Settings
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Social and Behavior Change and GenderComplementary FeedingGenderInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)
Household gender roles influence infant and young child feeding behaviors and may contribute to suboptimal complementary feeding practices through inequitable household decision making, intra-household food allocation, and limited paternal support for resources and caregiving, especially in rural areas.
Experiences Engaging Family Members in Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Nutrition: A Survey of Global Health Professionals
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Social and Behavior Change and GenderAdolescent NutritionGenderMaternal Nutrition
This research surveyed health professionals to document their experiences engaging family members in nutrition activities, their perceived barriers and facilitators, and their recommendations. Such research fills gaps in peer-reviewed literature to strengthen intervention design and implementation.
Changing Behavior, Attitudes, and Beliefs About Food Safety: A Scoping Review of Interventions Across the World and Implications for Empowering Consumers
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Social and Behavior Change and GenderFood Safety
While consumers are targeted for interventions to address knowledge gaps about food safety and behaviors that can reduce risk, there are no comprehensive analyses of these interventions.
Supplementary Feeding of Moderately Wasted Children in Sierra Leone Reduces Severe Acute Malnutrition and Death When Compared with Nutrition Counseling: A Retrospective Cohort Study
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Nutrition in Humanitarian ContextsWastingComplementary Feeding
Children who received supplementary feeding were less likely to develop severe adult malnutrition (SAM) or die and less likely to develop SAM between 6–24 weeks. These children were more likely to have a healthy mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) and higher rates of weight gain and MUAC at 6 weeks and 12 weeks. This article is behind a paywall.
Risk Factors of Stunting and Wasting in Somali Pre-School Age Children: Results from the 2019 Somalia Micronutrient Survey
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Nutrition in Humanitarian ContextsAdolescent NutritionFood Security
Young children in severely food insecure households, as well as children with inflammation and iron deficiency, had a higher risk of stunting. While wasting risk increased as household wealth decreased, it was lower in iron-deficient children than in iron-replete children. Wasting was also more common in children with recent diarrhea.
Nutrition in Humanitarian ContextsAdolescent NutritionBreastfeedingEmergency NutritionFood SecurityInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)Micronutrient Interventions
To ensure that children receive nutrition support in disaster to prevent malnutrition, this study recommends an explicit and well-coordinated approach that includes preparedness; advocacy; policy development; periodic nutritional assessments and nutritional support; and nutrition education for children, families, and aid workers.
Women's Nutrition: A Summary of Evidence, Policy, and Practice including Adolescent and Maternal Life Stages
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Nutrition and Health SystemsAdolescent NutritionGenderMaternal NutritionMicronutrient Interventions
A study of evidence, interventions, and guidelines for the nutrition of adolescent girls and women found gaps that include a lack of guidelines on nutrition, preconception nutrition, and assessment of nutritional status.
Nutrition and Health SystemsMaternal NutritionNutrition Assessment, Counseling, and Support (NACS)
UNICEF provides country teams and their partners with guidance on designing, implementing, and monitoring evidence-based programs to improve women’s nutrition across the life course.
Nutrition and Health SystemsCOVID-19Emergency NutritionInfant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN)Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
This edition presents evaluations from various projects, including a nutrition project in Ethiopia, a maternal and child health project in Sri Lanka, and a family planning project in Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia.
Counselling to Improve Maternal Nutrition: Considerations for Programming with Quality, Equity and Scale: A Technical Brief
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Nutrition and Health SystemsAdolescent NutritionBreastfeedingEmergency NutritionMaternal NutritionNutrition Assessment, Counseling, and Support (NACS)
This brief outlines approaches to improve the enabling environment for maternal nutrition counseling. Authors review key considerations for the design of counseling services and strategies to strengthen service delivery platforms and build health worker capacity.
Gaps in the Implementation and Uptake of Maternal Nutrition Interventions in Antenatal Care Services in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and India
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Nutrition and Health SystemsAdolescent NutritionBreastfeedingMicronutrient InterventionsNutrition Assessment, Counseling, and Support (NACS)
Nutrition gaps in antenatal care services include lack of specificity in national guidelines and protocols, bottlenecks in micronutrient supplies, low provider knowledge and skills, inadequate supervision to reinforce counseling, and inadequate family engagement. National protocols should be more specific about key nutrition interventions and assign accountability for coverage and quality.
Measuring Agency: What We Know and Where We Go from Here
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Monitoring, Evaluation, and LearningGenderGrowth Monitoring and Promotion
The most appropriate ways to measure women’s agency remain understudied. Several policy briefs review gaps in measuring women’s control over assets, their goal setting and decision-making, and their sense of control and efficacy, and offer an action plan to bridge gaps.
Systematic Review of Metrics Used to Characterise Dietary Nutrient Supply from Household Consumption and Expenditure Surveys
Publication Date:
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Using the household consumption and expenditure survey (HCES), researchers estimated household dietary nutrient supply to identify metrics reported and parameters used to construct these metrics. They summarized comparisons between estimates derived from the HCES and individual dietary assessment data and explored nutrient inadequacy in different demographic groups.
Strategies and Interventions for Healthy Adolescent Growth, Nutrition, and Development
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Monitoring, Evaluation, and LearningAdolescent NutritionFood SecurityMicronutrient Interventions
Effective interventions and policies for adolescent growth, nutrition, and development need to be multi-sectoral and supported by multi-faceted and multi-level policy, extending across education, health, food systems, social protection, and digital media. Data standardization and systems are essential to coordinate and monitor these responses.
Emergency Food Aid Challenges in Natural and Man-Made Disasters: A Systematic Review
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Nutrition in Humanitarian ContextsEmergency Nutrition
The most common challenges in countries receiving humanitarian food assistance during disasters and emergencies related to access and monitoring. Research should focus on practical approaches to solve problems and increase the effectiveness of this aid. This article is behind a paywall.
Monitoring, Evaluation, and LearningAdolescent NutritionFood SecurityMicronutrient Interventions
Inadequate investments in nutrition policy development and research have inhibited the development of adolescent-responsive nutritional policies. This leaves the nutrition community without an integrated perspective on adolescent growth and development and the role that nutrition plays.