High Level Forum on International Maternal and Child Nutrition Instigates Four Key Research Topics

The forum centered on:

Adolescent girls’ nutrition

Proposed Project:  The first step of a multi-year global research collaboration will look at factors that are responsible for better nutrition in adolescents including behavior and attitudes.

Heterogeneity of response to nutrition intervention

Proposed Project:  The first step of this project will be a literature review that will lead to a qualitative framework on drivers of resilience to infections across different populations.

Improved Dietary Assessment

Proposed Project: Development of a validated and customizable technology to assess usual individual dietary intake that can be applied to any target population, which would be a global resource for the nutrition community.

Scaling up Proven Nutrition Interventions

Proposed Project: Evaluate whether systems thinking can accurately describe and predict the success or failure of complex interventions and help identify key nutrition elements that can be adopted uniformly. Evaluate existing models for validation, replication, and/or adaptability.

"Malnutrition, both under and over, is of continued, pressing global concern. The Forum, with representation from 26 countries across academia, government, and the public and private sector was convened to identify and define discrete research projects where we could coordinate global effort. It was dynamic, open, and led to consensus around the proposed research,” says Prof. Frans Kok, Head of the Division of Human Nutrition at Wageningen University. "

"The Forum indicates that it is possible to develop a more streamlined and coordinated system in which to identify critical research issues, and conduct efficient research studies,” says Dr. Mandana Arabi, Executive Director, The Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science at the New York Academy of Sciences. “We expect, with proper coordination, funding, and communications that we can accelerate our work to improve maternal and child nutrition across the globe.”

The June 16 -17, 2014 "Forum on International Maternal and Child Nutrition: Initiating Research through Multi-Stakeholder Collaborations" is part of a series of activities to further mobilize the international community around the uptake of research recommendations issued in A Global Research Agenda for Nutrition Science, developed by The Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science in 2012 in collaboration with the World Health Organization and experts from the non-profit and academic sectors. The event drew representatives from 26 countries, and included influencers from government, academia, IGOs, and the private sector.