This October, SPRING participated in the 2016 Micronutrient Forum Global Conference, a space for global researchers and practitioners to collaborate on promoting scale-up and sustainability of evidence-based programs to improve micronutrient adequacy. This year’s theme was Positioning Women’s Nutrition at the Centre of Sustainable Development.
Five SPRING staff attended the conference and represented their work through participation in a SPRING-sponsored symposium on Approaches to Prevent and Control Anemia: Examples of Global, National, District, and Community Efforts and providing oral and poster presentations on SPRING’s anemia-related work.
The symposium was co-chaired by Dr. Sorrel Namaste (SPRING Preventing Anemia Team Lead), and featured presentations showcasing programs and innovative tools for anemia prevention and control at the global, national, district, and community levels. During the symposium, Alexis D’Agostino (SPRING M&E Specialist) introduced attendees to one of SPRING’s tools for anemia prevention through her presentation, “Guidance on Conducting Landscape Analyses for Anemia,” and Denish Moorthy (SPRING Technical Advisor, Micronutrients) presented on experiences with testing the District Assessment Tool for Anemia on behalf of Dr. Kate Quarshie of the Ghana Health Service.
Dr. Namaste also presented in a plenary on the various methods to adjust for inflammation in estimating the prevalence of iron deficiency using biomarkers.
Alexis D’Agostino, Denish Moorthy, and Christina Nyhus Dhillon (consultant) also represented SPRING with conference posters addressing SPRING’s micronutrient powder (MNP) distribution in Uganda, the impact of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions on anemia and hemoglobin concentrations, and lessons learned from USAID/SPRING’s MNP consultation. SPRING supported other posters on partnerships and social and behavior change.
Carrie Hubbell Melgarejo (SPRING Nutrition Advisor) represented SPRING’s multi-sectoral agriculture and nutrition interests and provided co-leadership for the Accelerated Reduction Effort on Anemia (AREA) community of practice.
