Breastfeeding – C4D Network

Desk review and SBCC roadmap on maternal, infant, and young child nutrition (MIYCN) and nutrition-sensitive practices in Indonesia (Alive & Thrive, 2019)

May 3, 2019

Alive & Thrive (A&T) researchers conducted an extensive desk review on maternal, infant, and young child nutrition (MIYCN) and nutrition-sensitive practices in Indonesia. The effort was aimed at supporting a national social and behavior change communication (SBCC) strategy as part of the Government of Indonesia’s National Stunting Reduction Movement.

A&T and key stakeholders—including UNICEF Indonesia, IMA World Health, Millennium Challenge Account Indonesia and The World Bank—continued to support the National Stunting Reduction Movement by using evidence from the desk review and other sources to develop a roadmap toward an SBCC strategy.

Click here for full details and access to both the desk review and the roadmap.

Harmonised Information, Education and Communication Tools for Nutrition [Arabic] (Whole of Syria Nutrition Sector, 2017)

April 29, 2019

A set of harmonised Information, Education and Communication (IEC) tools for nutrition in Arabic which were developed by the Whole of Syria (WoS) nutrition sector as a result of a nutrition, food security and livelihoods workshop in October 2016 in Jordan, attended by global nutrition and food security cluster coordinators and country-level coordinators and partners, and a follow-up operational workshop in March 2017.

Click here for background details to Whole of Syria (WoS) nutrition sector.

Click here for full range of materials.

Large-Scale Social and Behavior Change Communication Interventions Have Sustained Impacts on Infant and Young Child Feeding Knowledge and Practices – Results of a 2-Year Follow-Up Study in Bangladesh (The Journal of Nutrition, 148:10, 2018)

February 4, 2019

Sustained improvements in infant and young child feeding (IYCF) require continued implementation of effective interventions. From 2010–2014, Alive & Thrive (A&T) provided intensive interpersonal counseling (IPC), community mobilization (CM), and mass media (MM) in Bangladesh, demonstrating impact on IYCF practices. Since 2014, implementation has been continued and scaled up by national partners with support from other donors and with modifications such as added focus on maternal nutrition and reduced program intensity.

The authors assessed changes in intervention exposure and IYCF knowledge and practices in the intensive (IPC + CM + MM) compared with nonintensive areas (standard nutrition counseling + less intensive CM and MM) 2 y after termination of initial external donor support.

Conclusions: Continued IPC exposure and sustained impacts on IYCF knowledge and practices in intensive areas indicated lasting benefits from A&T’s interventions as they underwent major scale-up with reduced intensity.

Click here for full article.

Let’s Make it Work! Breastfeeding in the Workplace – Using C4D to make breastfeeding possible among working mothers (UNICEF, 2018)

October 29, 2018

In 2016, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF launched two country-level initiatives to improve breastfeeding practices of infants of working mothers, in partnership with businesses operating in two distinct settings:

• Ready-made garment (RMG) factory sites located in the urban and peri-urban areas of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
• A vast tea estate situated in Kericho County, Kenya.

The objective of the mother- and babyfriendly workplace initiatives is to increase working mothers’ demand for and access to facilities and services that support appropriate breastfeeding practices and care in the workplace.” In doing so, the initiatives aim to generate evidence on the operational feasibility, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of supporting breastfeeding in the workplace, and to showcase its benefits for children, families, communities and businesses. UNICEF applied the Communication for Development (C4D) process to design social and behavioural change communication strategies to increase acceptance of, and demand for, workplace breastfeeding programmes in each context.

This document presents accomplishments to date and conceptual thinking in C4D for promoting breastfeeding support in the workplace, emanating from these two experiences and building upon available evidence and lessons learned from former experiences. The document
is intended for programme planners within UNICEF as well as UNICEF partner organizations.

Click here for full report.

Dial ‘N’ for Nutrition? A Landscape Analysis of What We Know About m-Nutrition, m-Agriculture and m-Development (IDS Working Paper 481, 2017)

March 3, 2018

Child undernutrition is one of the most devastating realities in many parts of the world. Globally in 2015, 159 million children below the age of five years were too short for their age (stunted) and 50 million were too thin for their height (wasted). Inadequate nutrition in early childhood can have lifelong consequences, including poor physical and psychological health, and low educational attainment and employment opportunities.

Behaviour change of child carers is central to the effectiveness of many interventions addressing child undernutrition. For example, early and exclusive breastfeeding and the complementary feeding of infants between six and 23 months requires changes in feeding, caring and playing with children, as well as changes in the types and frequency of foods consumed and their preparation.

Agriculture is probably the sector with the most studies on the effectiveness of nutrition-sensitive interventions. For agriculture to become more nutrition sensitive, choices will need to be made about who controls resources, which crops and animals are farmed, the types of storage and processing patterns adopted, and the metrics used to assess interventions. All of these changes are embedded in long cultural traditions and are not necessarily straightforward to change.

The purpose of this paper is to assist would-be implementers and evaluators to understand the landscape they are operating in, so they can design nutrition and agriculture interventions that stand the greatest chance of working, and evaluation designs that stand the greatest chance of finding answers rigorously.

Click here for full paper.

Harmonised Information, Education and Communication Tools for Nutrition [Arabic] (Whole of Syria Nutrition Sector, 2017)

Dial ‘N’ for Nutrition? A Landscape Analysis of What We Know About m-Nutrition, m-Agriculture and m-Development (IDS Working Paper 481, 2017)

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