Health Outcomes Associated with Micronutrient-Fortified Complementary Foods in Infants and Young Children Aged 6–23 Months: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Csölle, Ildikó, Regina Felső, Éva Szabó, et al. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, June 2022
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Research Articles
Fortified complementary foods are effective in preventing anemia in infants and young children 6–23 months of age in malaria-endemic regions. Researchers should investigate the effects of complementary food fortification globally, including in regions where malaria is not endemic.
Healthy Diet: A Definition for the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021
United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021, March 2021
Reports and Tools
This brief places health-promotion, disease prevention, and food safety at the center of defining a healthy diet and urges translation of this definition into specific food-based recommendations. The Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization developed guiding principles to ensure culturally appropriate, sustainable, affordable, and healthy diets that align with these principles and form the basis for interventions.
The Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Consortium’s 2022 Annual Report
Micronutrient Forum, June 2023
- Knowledge Management
Reports and Tools
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.
Hidden No More: New Estimates Help the Nutrition Community Support Women and Children at Risk of Micronutrient Deficiencies
USAID Advancing Nutrition, October 2022
- Food Systems
- Knowledge Management
Reports and Tools
Timely data on the burden of micronutrient deficiencies is essential to understanding what works where and whether we’re making progress. Researchers recently estimated the global and regional prevalence of deficiencies in one or more micronutrients among preschool-age children and non-pregnant women of reproductive age and bring transparency to the process; however data gaps illuminate how much still remains unknown about the burden of micronutrient deficiencies in all demographics.
High Consumption of Unhealthy Commercial Foods and Beverages Tracks Across the Complementary Feeding Period in Rural/Peri-Urban Cambodia
Hinnouho, Guy-Marino, Elaine L. Ferguson, Amy MacDougall, et al. Maternal & Child Nutrition, February 2023
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Research Articles
The high frequency of unhealthy commercial food and beverage consumption during the complementary feeding period requires early interventions to increase caregiver awareness of the risks; promote increased breastfeeding; and encourage consumption of affordable, nutritious, and locally available foods.
Home Environment and Nutritional Status Mitigate the Wealth Gap in Child Development: A Longitudinal Study in Vietnam
Tran, Lan Mai, Phuong Hong Nguyen, Melissa F. Young, et al. BMC Public Health, February 2023
- Early Childhood Development
Research Articles
Wealth-related gaps in cognitive development found during early childhood increased in middle childhood. Maternal factors, quality of home environment, and child nutritional status mitigated this gap in early childhood more than in middle childhood. Interventions to improve home environment quality, maternal education, well-being, and child nutrition status may help reduce developmental deficits associated with poverty.
Home Fortification of Foods with Multiple Micronutrient Powders for Health and Nutrition in Children under Two Years of Age
Suchdev, Parminder S., M.E.D. Jefferds, E. Ota, et al. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2: CD008959, February 2020
- Food Systems
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Research Articles
This article updates a 2011 systematic review that assessed the impact of home fortification of foods with micronutrient powders (MNP) on nutrition, health, and developmental outcomes in children under 2 years of age. It covered 29 studies on 33,147 children in low- and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean where anemia is prevalent. The review concluded that home fortification is effective in reducing anemia and iron deficiency and that giving children younger than two MNP appears to be better than providing nothing or a placebo. The impact on early childhood development is unclear however. Researchers suggest further investigation of morbidity outcomes, including those related to malaria and diarrhea, is needed.
Home Garden Interventions in Crisis and Emergency Settings
Baliki, Ghassan, Dorothee Weiffen, Gwendolyn Moiles, et al. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, May 2023
- Nutrition in Humanitarian Contexts
Research Articles
Authors call for conducting more research on long-term garden care and sustainability, identifying critical inputs and supports, integrating contextual factors, and developing testable linkages between direct and indirect program effects and pathways.
Household Food Insecurity and Early Childhood Development: Longitudinal Evidence from Ghana
Aurino, Elisabetta, Sharon Wolf, Edward Tsinigo. PLoS ONE, 15(4): e0230965, April 2020
- Early Childhood Development
Research Articles
An analysis of longitudinal information on preschool-age children and their households in Ghana informs this study. Authors focus on the relationship between three levels of food-insecure households and early childhood development domains across three years. They conclude that children from households with transitory food insecurity—food insecurity that only occurs in one wave—experienced decreased numeracy, short-term memory, self-regulation, and literacy. Literacy skills continued to decrease for children from persistently food-insecure households or households that experience food insecurity in two or all waves. The authors believe that these findings can help stakeholders develop multi-sectoral early-childhood strategies.
Household Food Insecurity and Early Childhood Development: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Oliveira, Klébya Hellen Dantas de, Géssica Mercia de Almeida, Muriel Bauermann Gubert, et al. Maternal & Child Nutrition, February 2020
- Early Childhood Development
- Food Systems
Research Articles
Significant associations exist between household food insecurity and several early childhood development domains, including developmental risk, vocabulary skills, and math skills; while there are marginal associations with school readiness, reading, and motor development. It is important for researchers to have standardized methods and clear definitions of domains to increase comparability globally.
Household-Level Consumption Data can be Redistributed for Individual-Level Optifood Diet Modeling: Analysis from Four Countries
Knight, Frances, Monica Woldt, Kavita Sethuraman, et al. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, November 2021
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Research Articles
Results suggest that household consumption and expenditure surveys data can be used in Optifood analyses of dietary patterns and micronutrient gaps for 12- to 23-month-old children in place of individual-level 24-hour recalls. Further analyses are required for different age groups and locations.
How a Comprehensive Food Policy Improved Child and Adolescent Diets at School in Chile
Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Academy, March 2022
- Food Systems
Reports and Tools
While the school environment provides an opportunity to improve health and nutritional well-being, complementary regulations in other environments may reduce partial compensatory behavior and influence overall child and adolescent diets.
How A Digital Tool May Help Health Workers Improve Growth Monitoring and Promotion and Reduce Malnutrition
USAID Advancing Nutrition, August 2023
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Reports and Tools
USAID Advancing Nutrition developed this guidance package to support the development of a digital tool for growth monitoring and promotion. The package compiles recommendations for growth monitoring and promotion service delivery and business processes and workflows for delivering and supervising these services. It also includes data elements and indicators to prompt follow-up actions; decision-support logic to guide health workers based on the data they input; and suggestions on how to use data to support monitoring, reporting, and supervision.
How AI Is Transforming Maternal Health Care in Vietnam
Nguyen, L., Council on Foreign Relations, June 2022
- Knowledge Management
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Reports and Tools
The Momby app is a virtual assistant that provides nutritional advice and education on fetal development, bonding practices, essential newborn care, and breastfeeding. Users can make health care appointments and ask questions in real time. The app also features a version for fathers. Apps are not a replacement for health staff but offer a way for caregivers to seek out information and for health workers to expand their reach.
How Can Nutrition Research Better Reflect the Relationship Between Wasting and Stunting in Children? Learnings from the Wasting and Stunting Project
Sadler, Kate, Philip T. James, Zulfiqar A. Bhutta, et al. The Journal of Nutrition, June 2022
- Nutrition in Humanitarian Contexts
Research Articles
Authors discussed how to design and finance research with a wasting and stunting lens to better understand, prevent, and treat child undernutrition. Lessons learned focused on the interactions and relationships between children's weight loss and linear growth faltering, factors driving different types of undernutrition, and the importance of identifying and targeting those most at risk.
How Can We Realise the Full Potential of Health Systems for Nutrition?
Heidkamp, Rebecca A., Emily Wilson, Purnima Menon, et al. The BMJ, 368 :l6911, February 2020
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Research Articles
Although the movement to eradicate malnutrition has been gaining momentum, countries are still struggling to achieve their nutrition goals. This article emphasizes the important role health systems play in nutrition intervention and examines how they are, or are not, reaching critical groups. It assesses the opportunity gap between coverage of the nutrition intervention and coverage of the health service and which groups and subpopulations are being overlooked to provide recommendations for how health systems can achieve nutrition-related goals.
How Countries Can Reduce Anemia among Women of Reproductive Age: Lessons from Exemplar Countries
International Maternal Newborn Health Conference, May 2023
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Events
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.
How Countries Can Reduce Child Stunting at Scale: Lessons from Exemplar Countries
Bhutta, Zulfiqar A., Nadia Akseer, Emily C. Keats, et al. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, July 2020
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Research Articles
Reducing child stunting requires interventions in multiple sectors. Improving maternal education, fertility practices, and nutrition, as well as maternal and newborn care, are strong contributors to change. Investing to improve reproductive health practices are important to increase contraceptive use, delay first pregnancy, and increase birth spacing. Improving economic conditions, parental education, and access to water and sanitation are also critical.
How COVID-19 Affected Food Systems, Health Service Delivery, and Maternal and Infant Nutrition Practices: Implications for Moving Forward in Kenya
Ahoya, Brenda, Justine A. Kavle, Laura Kiige, et al. Maternal & Child Nutrition, December 2022
- Food Systems
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Research Articles
In Kenya, fear of infection and government lockdowns reduces health service uptake, a lack of clear guidance delayed breastfeeding, and increased mother-child separation following delivery among COVID-19-positive women. Unemployment, job loss, increased food prices, and limited social protection measures led pregnant and lactating women to skip meals and reduce the quantity and variety of foods they consumed. Improving maternal and infant nutrition practices requires facility and community health education, psychosocial support, and social protection measures.
How Do Children with Severe Underweight and Wasting Respond to Treatment? A Pooled Secondary Data Analysis to Inform Future Intervention Studies
Obeng-Amoako, Gloria A. Odei, Heather Stobaugh, Stephanie V. Wrottesley, et al. Maternal & Child Nutrition, October 2022
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Research Articles
Although a weight-for-age z-score less than three (WAZ <−3) is common among severely and moderately wasted children, this indicator is not widely used in treatment programming. Children with moderate wasting and WAZ <−3, who are typically not eligible for therapeutic feeding, likely require longer or more tailored treatment.
How Do Food Companies Try to Reach Lower-Income Consumers, and Do They Succeed? Insights From a Systematic Review
Nordhagen, Stella, Kathrin M. Demmler. Global Food Security, June 2023
- Food Systems
Research Articles
Researchers identified 13 business model features that food companies use to reach lower-income consumers, but found little evidence of success in reaching consumers or improving diet quality.
How Hinga Weze Supported Smallholder Farmers to Improve Crop Productivity, Incomes, and Nutritional Status
The New Times, March 2022
- Knowledge Management
Reports and Tools
Hinga Weze trained and supported farmers, partnered with financial institutions and business development service providers to create agricultural loan products, created and strengthened solidarity savings groups, and strengthened extension services. Its social inclusion strategy included partnering with women, youth, and persons with disabilities to provide agricultural equipment, income-generating assets, and improved seed varieties through grants and training on farming, entrepreneurship, and nutrition-sensitive agriculture.
How India is Moving from an "Ego-Based" to an "Ecosystem-Based" Digital Health System
Exemplars in Global Health, July 2022
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Reports and Tools
The Long Live India Digital Mission is creating a platform for longitudinal electronic health records for India. The system will establish national health identifications, a registry for facilities and providers, and national digital health records to improve patient care and outcomes.
How the Marketing of Formula Milk Influences Our Decisions on Infant Feeding
World Health Organization, February 2022
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Reports and Tools
This report exposes the aggressive marketing practices used by the formula milk industry, highlights the effects on women and families, and outlines opportunities for action.