R4D's Managing Director Marty Makinen participated in a two-day Advisory Board meeting October 28-29 to review and discuss the progress of the Emory University project to improve maternal, neonatal and child health outcomes in poor countries. This session was attended by Advisory Board members from hospitals, academic institutions, foundations, independent consultancies and the World Health Organization.
The Advisory Board was established to provide guidance and feedback on the project’s overall agenda and plays a key role in monitoring the completion of project activities including the production of high-quality reports.
About the project
The Emory University project to improve maternal, neonatal and child health outcomes through better designed nutrition policies and programs is an 18 month landscaping study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The project’s main objectives are to conduct a comprehensive review of the scientific evidence supporting nutritional interventions aimed at improving maternal neonatal and child health and to review program implementation experience in three focus countries - India, Nigeria and Ethiopia with the goal of assessing the efficacy and effectiveness of programs and identifying promising interventions.
Maternal nutrition in low-income countries merits attention as excessively high maternal mortality rates are directly related to mothers’ nutritional status. In addition, neo-natal and child mortality and long-term child development are affected by mothers’ nutritional status. There is clear and well-substantiated evidence of the problem, yet maternal nutrition and the efficacy and effectiveness of interventions remain neglected topics.
Moving forward
Initial findings from this work show that though there are many papers published on maternal nutrition interventions, carefully conceived and performed studies that would constitute evidence of efficacy and effectiveness are rare. Only few of the published papers use any kind of comparative method to judge results and even fewer employ randomized control trials, the “gold standard” for evidence. Thus, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about the evidence.
Given this situation, Makinen recommended that a productive output of the study that would go beyond its focus on assessing the literature could be to make suggestions about the methods that should be applied to produce needed evidence. Makinen said, “It is clear that there will be continued efforts to try to address maternal nutrition. Opportunities will arise to systematically produce evidence from the efforts—but only if appropriately designed evaluation methods are applied.”
The Advisory Board will reconvene in Spring 2011 to provide guidance on the next stage of project activities.