Listing All Programs

Use the links below to learn more about each program.

A2Z: Micronutrient Leadership and Support and Child Blindness Activity
A2Z is USAID's flagship project to address micronutrient deficiencies and prevent child blindness by taking proven interventions to scale-particularly through engaging the private sector and expanding the number of countries served and the number of people reached. A2Z's emphasis includes both nutritional supplements (iron, folate, zinc, vitamin A) and food-based strategies, in particular, fortification. A2Z aims to strengthen the coverage of fortified staple foods reaching low income families in 20-30 countries. A2Z is currently working in countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Africa's Health in 2010
AED supports USAID's Africa Bureau in contributing to policy change related to health and nutrition in Africa and in strengthening African institutions. The nutrition team works with US government, international agencies, and African institutions to improve programs addressing nutritional problems. Priority activities include working with African partners to integrate and strengthen the delivery of Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA) into maternal, newborn, and child health programs; to promote safe feeding practices for HIV-exposed children; and to address the nutritional needs of adults and children living with HIV/AIDS. The project also conducts research and analysis on areas of emerging interest, such as nutrition and tuberculosis.

Breastfeeding, Antiretroviral drugs, and Nutrition Study (BAN)
This study is looking at the impact of antiretroviral drugs and nutritional interventions, including maternal nutrition supplementation, exclusive breastfeeding, and use of locally produced therapeutic foods following early breastfeeding cessation, on mother-to-child HIV transmission and the health and nutritional status of mothers and infants. To date, over 1000 women and infants have been enrolled and are being followed for one year. The study is being carried out in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control, which funds the study, the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill and UNC Project/Lilongwe.

Calories In: Consumer Research and Message Development
One sure way to control your weight is to control what you eat. However, that is easier said than done. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asked AED to lead a consumer research effort to learn what might motivate key audience segments to make a more concerted effort to manage their "energy intake." Using CDC data, AED identified two target segments who are interested in losing weight, but differ in their self-efficacy (Confident Competents and At-Risk Uncertains). Focus groups with these audiences showed that American adults know a lot about strategies for portion size, volumetrics and reducing consumption of sweetened beverages, but lack the time and skills to use that knowledge. AED will develop practical tools to help households manage their calorie intake. CDC plans to expand the project to reach two new audiences, such as providers and state health programs.

Combatting Micronutrient Deficiencies: A Program Gap Analysis
AED was asked by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) to conduct a comprehensive review and analysis of programs to combat micronutrient deficiencies; to identify gaps in programming and funding; and make estimates of the economic ramifications of failing to address the problem.

Commercial Sector Analysis for Expanding Fortified Complementary Foods
AED joined with McKinsey & Company to conduct a commercial sector analysis for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to assess the prospects for expanding the supply and use of high-quality foods and products for young children. This involved market research at the global and country level in India, China, South Africa, Senegal, and Nigeria with pharmaceutical firms, consumer packaged goods companies, consumer groups, government, and NGOs. The goal is to identify the commercial barriers to entry and incentives required for the introduction of fortified complementary foods and products aimed at improving the nutritional status of 6-24 month old children among C and D class consumer groups. AED looked at a range of issues including consumer awareness, price/affordability, potential market size, R&D product development, distribution, and partnership prospects with the public/non-profit sector.

Counseling Tools on HIV and Infant Feeding
AED was contracted by the World Health Organization, Department of Child and Adolescent Health to develop a guide for conducting formative research to adapt global HIV and infant feeding recommendation to the local context, and to develop generic tools for counseling HIV-infected mothers on feeding options and decisions. The generic tools included a set of 16 counseling cards for use by health workers, take-home flyers for mothers and other care-givers, a comprehensive reference guide for use by program managers and counselors, and an orientation guide on how to use the materials. These materials are now part of WHO's new integrated course on infant feeding counseling, and have been adapted for use in several African countries.

Essential Services for Health/Ethiopia (ESHE)
The ESHE project, funded by USAID, aims to improve family health in Ethiopia. AED is carrying out nutrition and behavior change program activities under the project, including working with newly established volunteer health promoters at the community level. Volunteers are trained to promote "Essential Nutrition Actions" such as breastfeeding and use of iodized salt. The ESHE Project will reach an estimated 6.5 million direct beneficiaries in 60 focus woredas (20 in each of three target regions).

Expansion of PMTCT Services in Zambia
The main objective of the project, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is to integrate counseling for HIV, infant feeding, and maternal nutrition into health and community services to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to their infants. Community members are being trained to build awareness and change health practices on maternal nutrition, as well as infant and young child feeding in the context of HIV/AIDS and PMTCT. The project is expanding work conducted by the LINKAGES project in two districts of the Southern Province of Zambia.

Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA)
FANTA provides technical assistance to NGOs and national governments in nutrition and food security program design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation as well as nutrition and food security policy and strategy development. Through production of guidelines and program tools, in-country technical assistance, program review, and targeted evaluation and operations research, FANTA strengthens the impact of nutrition and food security programs and policies on food insecure and malnourished populations. The project, funded by USAID, advances food security knowledge by publishing and disseminating state-of-the-art technical information, including best practices and standards, and supports the development and testing of innovative interventions to prevent and treat malnutrition, such as community-based treatment of severe acute malnutrition in children and nutritional care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Ghana Sustainable Change Project (GSCP)
The purpose of the five-year USAID project is to improve the health of Ghanaians through the use of state-of-the-art communications and social marketing initiatives. The project is supporting nutrition as an integral aspect of all of the USAID Mission's health programs-including child survival, maternal and reproductive health, and HIV/AIDS. One of the project's priority interventions is timely and appropriate breastfeeding. GSCP has four overall objectives: build capacity within the public and private sector to support effective behavior change activities; develop behavior change strategies that use mass media campaigns and support community activities to reinforce desired health behaviors; strengthen the ability of government officials and policymakers to advocate for programs and activities that create positive behavior change; and use social marketing to promote products and services that will support positive behavior change. AED is working in 28 districts, located in seven of the 10 regions of the country.

Health Communication Partnership (HCP)
The Health Communication Partnership (HCP), funded by USAID, promotes healthy societies by advancing the field of health communication, using proven and evidence-based strategies, and developing new approaches. HCP addresses HIV/AIDS; reproductive health, maternal health, child survival, nutrition; and infectious diseases (e.g. malaria, tuberculosis). At both individual and societal levels, the project advocates for supportive environments, effective health services, and health literacy. It focuses on three domains of communication intervention: individuals and communities, health services, and social and political environments. AED is leading the HCP program in Ethiopia, which includes a focus on infant and young child feeding. AED has also designed and launched a "health competent schools" initiative in Jordan, which includes activities to engage middle school-aged children in adopting healthy nutrition habits and prevent obesity.

HEALTHY: A Middle School Diabetes Prevention Program
Experts agree that preventing childhood obesity and its associated chronic diseases requires a comprehensive and sustained effort, and schools hold promise for mounting such efforts. AED was hired to provide social marketing and consumer research support to a national prevention study funded by the National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). AED's task: frame the healthier eating and physical activity behaviors so they are cooler and more attractive to the target 6th-8th graders, most of them African American or Latino. AED created an edgy HEALTHY brand, which has captured the students' attention and interest. In-school promotional materials reflect an edgy urban sensibility and AED is engaging the young people in producing user-generated media and activities. From 2006-2009, the diabetes prevention intervention trial will run in 42 schools in seven communities across the United States. The evaluation will track clinical changes and reduction in risk factors as a result of the school-based structural and environmental changes, and AED's promotion efforts.

Infant and Young Child Feeding Program (LINKAGES)
LINKAGES, a worldwide program funded by USAID, promoted five health-related practices: exclusive breastfeeding, timely and appropriate complementary child feeding, safe infant feeding in communities affected by HIV, better maternal nutrition, and the Lactational Amenorrhea Method as a safe, short-term, modern method of birth spacing. Over the past ten years, LINKAGES documented increases in the timely initiation of breastfeeding after delivery and exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of life. For example, in Madagascar between 2000 and 2005 timely initiation of breastfeeding increased from 32% to 68% and exclusive breastfeeding for infants 0 < 6 months increased from 42% to 70%.

Additional Links:
LINKAGES in Ethiopia
LINKAGES in Madagascar

Marketing Healthier Food to Young People
For a report to Congress, CDC wanted to know more about how the food industry effectively markets to children. CDC tapped AED to help it develop recommendations for how best to market healthier foods to tweens. AED is conducting qualitative research--including in-home observations and ride-alongs--with families of 8-12 year-olds to understand how they make decisions related to meal selection and preparation, availability of snacks and eating out of the home. To augment the research findings, AED is convening an expert panel, including food and entertainment marketers, academics and consumer researchers.

Media-Smart Youth - Eat, Think, and Be Active!
In our media-saturated society, young people need help to understand the role that media play in shaping their values about nutrition and physical activity, and to build skills that encourage critical thinking and healthy lifestyle choices. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) asked AED to assist with a media literacy initiative to address these important issues among young people ages 11 to 13. AED developed an interactive-learning curriculum geared to youth in after-school programs. In each lesson, participants create a small-scale media project with health messages based on what they learned. AED provided technical assistance to pilot sites implementing curriculum lessons and media production projects, and created a Web site for curriculum pilot-site facilitators to share experiences and provide feedback.

Contact
Ronne Ostby Maling
Monica Silvelstro

Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Technical Assistance Center
The Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Technical Assistance Center, Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides on-site training and technical assistance to Head Start programs that serve migrant and seasonal farmworker families and their children, from birth through age five, across the United States. The project's goals are to improve the quality of services to low-income children and their families and in turn promote social competence and school readiness in young children. Head Start programs get a wide range of support, in areas such as management, early childhood development, nutrition education (including prevention of obesity), menu planning and analysis, oral health and health services, transportation of young children, appropriate facilities, developmentally and linguistically appropriate services, working with young children with disabilities and building family and community partnerships.

Nutrition and HIV/AIDS Electronic Discussion Forum
ProNut-HIV is a collaborative effort between the AED Nutrition Center and the AED-SATELLIFE Center for Health Information and Technology. The electronic forum shares up-to-date information, knowledge, and experience in nutrition and HIV/AIDS. The focus of the discussion group is nutritional care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). The goal is to enhance positive living by promoting constructive dialogue between PLWHA, front-line workers, researchers, HIV/AIDS specialists, program managers, and policy makers. The expected outcomes of the discussion group are improved access to state-of-the-art information on nutritional care and support for PLWHA for professionals in the field, motivation of front-line workers to increase and improve nutritional care and support for PLWHA, empowerment of PLWHA through the experience of others living positively with HIV through proper nutrition, and consensus among front-line workers and policy makers on the importance of nutritional care and support for PLWHA.

Nutrition Strategy Analysis
AED joined with McKinsey & Company to provide technical assistance in the development of a nutrition strategy for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AED prepared micronutrient profiles and nutrition profiles by 'vulnerable group' and identified priority areas where interventions or research activities will make a sizable difference in addressing the problem of undernutrition.

Point-of-Use Water Disinfection and Zinc Treatment Project (POUZN)
The project, funded by USAID, is designed to prevent diarrhea by introducing point-of-use water disinfection and to reduce the severity and length of diarrheal episodes with zinc and ORS treatment. In India and Tanzania POUZN is engaging the commercial and public sectors to make both products widely available at an affordable price. For zinc this means accelerating registration as an over-the-counter treatment and building partnerships with local pharmaceutical firms to build distribution networks that reach at-risk populations and engage NGOs in getting the products to at-risk populations. A second focus is conducting large-scale public education campaigns and educating health providers on the new protocols for diarrhea prevention and treatment.

PROFILES
PROFILES is a participatory advocacy process that uses interactive computer-based models to project the functional consequences of poor nutrition on important development outcomes such as mortality, morbidity, fertility, school performance, and labor productivity. PROFILES also estimates the costs and benefits of nutrition programs in a given country. Created to communicate with policymakers, PROFILES offers a way to engage national leaders in policy dialogue about public health nutrition. PROFILES encourages program planners to examine potential payoffs of alternative program approaches. By learning to manipulate models and by becoming familiar with the supporting scientific literature, users gain an appreciation of the different functional consequences of malnutrition and the role of various interventions. Since 1993 when PROFILES was first introduced in Bangladesh, the process has been used in 25 countries to support specific policy changes.

Promoting Fruit and Vegetable Consumption Among Tweens: An Innovative Product Development Approach
Effective marketing starts with the product before it considers messaging or promotion. So CDC moved beyond messages and communication, and asked AED the question: how can we create or improve a product or service that would encourage young people to eat more fruit and vegetables? AED enlisted world-renowned product design firm, IDEO, to help devise an answer. With AED and CDC, IDEO is leading an innovative product development process that engages tweens, parents, growers and food suppliers. This process will present CDC with a design framework, some simple prototypes to test and recommendations for potential commercial partnerships.

REDUCE-ALIVE
REDUCE and ALIVE are participator advocacy processes based on interactive computer models that estimate the impact, in a specific region, of poor maternal and newborn care (respectively) on maternal and infant deaths; on short-and long-term illnesses, and disabilities; and on economic productivity. REDUCE and ALIVE include emphasis on nutritional factors such as maternal nutrition and anemia, low birthweight, and breastfeeding, Since 2000 REDUCE and ALIVE have been used in 12 countries to effect changes in policies, programs, and levels of funding.

Speak for the Child
Speak for the Child supports families and communities in western Kenya to improve the health, nutrition, and psychosocial care of young children orphaned and affected by HIV/AIDS. The project partners with experienced community-based organization to reach thousands of orphans and vulnerable children. Key components of the program, funded by the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, include: recruiting and training household mentors who provide support to caregivers; establishing school, health clinic, and pharmacy agreements to cover preschool fees, immunizations, and medicines; ensuring that children have blankets, insecticide-treated bednets, and emergency food when needed; making certain that households have water purification products, soap, seeds, and fertilizer, and providing income generating opportunities to caregiver support groups.

Umoyo Network Capacity Building for Quality HIV/AIDS Services
This project aims to build the capacity of Malawian NGOs to implement an integrated strategy for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) and improved infant feeding counseling in health care and community settings. Since 2003, ten NGO PMTCT sites are providing the full PMTCT package; 3,297 pregnant women have been counseled at these sites and 316 are enrolled in the PMTCT program.

We Can! (Ways to Enhance Children's Activity and Nutrition)
We Can! is unique among existing youth obesity-prevention initiatives in its focus on programs and activities for parents and families as a primary group for influencing youth audiences. Funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), We Can! provides activities that encourage improved nutritional choices, increased physical activity, and reduced "screen time" in youth ages 8-13. Materials developed by AED include a parent handbook in English and Spanish, a community mobilization tool kit, a six-session parent curriculum for use by community agencies, posters, print ads, radio spots, b-roll footage, and a program fact sheet. Over 42 communities across the U.S. have signed on as official We Can! sites. The overall media placement from the launch neared 300 stories in broadcast, print and online media outlets, with viewership exceeding 139 million. The consumer Web site was launched on the same day, providing parents, caregivers, and health care providers with user-friendly resources and tips for preventing childhood obesity.

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