SAHYOG, a tech-enabled support system for health workers developed with Alive & Thrive, wins MIT Solve global challenge award An intervention leveraging technology to improve quality of health care service in community settings has won an MIT Solve Novel Measurement for Performance Improvement in Primary Healthcare Challenge award. The approach was developed by Alive & Thrive with health system stakeholders in India and Bangladesh. Read more.

Private sector stakeholders in Nigeria and Viet Nam are recognizing the benefits of supporting employees to breastfeed Companies know a good deal when they see one. In Nigeria and Viet Nam, company managers are implementing programs to support workplace lactation and breastfeeding — recognizing the myriad benefits for employees and their companies.

Cambodia and Laos health officials visit Viet Nam to share perspectives on improving breastfeeding and newborn care services Health leaders from Cambodia and Laos learned about the Centers of Excellence for Breastfeeding initiative in Viet Nam and shared their insights and experiences for improving breastfeeding and newborn care services. Read more.

Seven state governments pledge to support efforts to accelerate the scale up of nutrition interventions in Nigeria Seven state governments committed to partner with Alive & Thrive to scale up nutrition interventions as the country continues to advance its multisectoral agenda of improving national nutrition indicators. Read more.

Growth monitoring and promotion technology solution aims to improve service delivery and strategic use of data in Bangladesh After a year of intensive development and pilot testing, the Government of Bangladesh has added a new module for growth monitoring and promotion (GMP) to its core mobile application-based service delivery platform for frontline workers. Read more.

Scale up of maternal nutrition interventions strengthens antenatal care in Ethiopia The scale up of a package of maternal nutrition interventions in five of Ethiopia’s 10 regions is progressing well, stakeholders said during recent interviews. The package was developed with Alive & Thrive technical assistance. Read more.

NEW RESOURCES

VIDEO Building the Future of Girls: Alive & Thrive Interventions for Improved Adolescent Nutrition This video presents Alive & Thrive's adolescent nutrition intervention in Ethiopia, including Amhara, Somali and SNNP regions. The intervention, co-designed with multiple stakeholders, including adolescent girls and their families, sought to improve dietary practices. Girl students, school teachers, school administrators, health extension workers and Alive & Thrive staff offer their perspectives on the interventions. Short video, longer video.

BRIEF Integrating Nutrition Interventions into a Polio Immunization Platform This brief, intended for implementers and researchers, presents lessons from the Alive & Thrive initiative’s experience integrating a maternal, infant, and young child nutrition (MIYCN) intervention through an existing polio eradication platform in Uttar Pradesh, India. Download.

TOOLKIT Workplace Breastfeeding and Lactation Support Program in Nigeria This toolkit was developed based on lessons learned from a pilot workplace breastfeeding/lactation support program with the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) Network of Entrepreneurial Women (NNEW) and other breastfeeding initiatives in Nigeria. It provides a guideline for private companies, public organizations and key institutions interested in establishing workplace lactation programs for their workers. Download.

POSTERS SBCC Summit Posters Three posters on mass media costing, scaling up maternal nutrition, and school-based nutrition highlight results from some of Alive & Thrive's implementation research in Africa and Asia. They were shared this month at the 2022 SBCC Summit in Marrakech, Morocco.

Explore all of our MIYCAN resources on the Alive & Thrive website.

NEW RESEARCH

The Financial Costs of Mass Media Interventions Used for Improving Breastfeeding Practices in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Vietnam (December 2022) International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Commentary Babies Before Bottom Lines: A Call for Australia to End Exploitative Marketing of Commercial Milk Formula at Home and Abroad (November 2022) The Lancet Regional Health Western Pacific Birth and Newborn Care Policies and Practices Limit Breastfeeding at Maternity Facilities in Vietnam (October 2022) Frontiers in Nutrition Implementation and Effectiveness of Policies Adopted to Enable Breastfeeding in the Philippines Are Limited by Structural and Individual Barriers (September 2022) International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health “Stronger With Breastmilk Only” Initiative: Evaluation in Four Countries in West and Central Africa and at Regional Level (August 2022) Society for Implementation Science in Nutrition

Explore our research on our Evidence Map. All of Alive & Thrive research is Open Access, as are Our Data.

SOCIAL MEDIA SPOTLIGHT

Alive & Thrive was proud to participate in this year’s SBCC Summit in Morocco, including poster presentations by our Ethiopia team. Alive & Thrive is now on LinkedIn. Visit our page, follow us and add your thoughts on our posts. We invite you to follow Alive & Thrive and engage on these and other important topics! Follow us on Twitter @aliveandthrive Like us on Facebook Join us on Instagram 

UPCOMING EVENTS

Conferences International Pediatric Association, February 19-24, India International Maternal Newborn Health Conference, May 8-11, Cape Town, South Africa 33rd International Confederation of Midwives Triennial Congress, June 11-14, Bali, Indonesia Global Congress on Implementation of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, June 20-22, Geneva, Switzerland International Council of Nurses Congress, July 1-5, Montreal, Canada Women Deliver, July 17-20, Kigali, Rwanda International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) Congress, Oct 9-13, Paris, France Webinars Coffee & Chai Chats: Spotlighting new global data and actions needed on hidden hunger The third in a series of chats organized by the Micronutrient Forum. This chat with Dr. Ken Brown, Chair of the Report’s Advisory Panel, Micronutrient Forum hosted by Dr. Megan Bourassa, Program Lead, Micronutrient Data Innovation Alliance (DInA) will focus on how to enhance data collection and identify the best sources of information. Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023 at 10 a.m. EST. More information and registration here. Courses Investing in Child Nutrition, Alive & Thrive's IYCF e-learning course, has moved to Agora UNICEF's Agora learning platform now hosts "Investing in Child Nutrition," the e-learning course developed by Alive & Thrive for health professionals. Access the course here (you must register on Agora to enroll in the course). Submit your webinars and other virtual public events — including the date, time, and a link — here.