Mobile-Based Nutrition and Child Health Monitoring to Inform Program Development: An Experience From Liberia.

Background: Implementing complex nutrition and other public health projects and tracking nutrition interventions, such as women's diet and supplementation and infant and young child feeding practices, requires reliable routine data to identify potential program gaps and to monitor trends in behaviors in real time. However, current monitoring and evaluation practices generally do not create an environment for this real-time tracking. This article describes the development and application of a mobile-based nutrition and health monitoring system, which collected monitoring data on project activities, women's nutrition, and infant and young child feeding practices in real time.

Key principles to improve programmes and interventions in complementary feeding.

Although there are some examples of successful complementary feeding programmes to promote healthy growth and prevent stunting at the community level, to date there are few, if any, examples of successful programmes at scale. A lack of systematic process and impact evaluations on pilot projects to generate lessons learned has precluded scaling up of effective programmes. Programmes to effect positive change in nutrition rarely follow systematic planning, implementation, and evaluation (PIE) processes to enhance effectiveness over the long term.

Determinants of delayed initiation of breastfeeding in rural Ethiopia: programmatic implications.

Background: A number of studies have examined the possible adverse impact of services offered by health workers and community members on postpartum infant feeding practices. The present analysis utilized extant data collected previously through the baseline surveys of two related child health and nutrition projects implemented in rural Ethiopia and explored key risk factors associated with delayed initiation of breastfeeding for more than 1 hour after birth.

Objective: To investigate the most important determinants of delayed initiation of breastfeeding.

Implementing an integrated nutrition package at large scale in Madagascar: the Essential Nutrition Actions framework.

Background: Madagascar has some of the highest rates of child stunting, maternal malnutrition, and infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa.

Objective: To improve infant and young child feeding practices, increase uptake of micronutrient supplements, and improve women's dietary practices through implementation of a nutrition project based on the Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA) framework.

Methods: Interventions included training, interpersonal communication, community mobilization, and mass media.

Improving breastfeeding practices on a broad scale at the community level: success stories from Africa and Latin America.

Large-scale community-level behavior change programs designed to improve breastfeeding practices were implemented in Bolivia, Ghana, and Madagascar. These programs reached sizable populations: Bolivia, 1 million; Ghana, 3.5 million; and Madagascar, 6 million.