A nutrient-rich diet plays a critical role in the first two years of a young child’s life, to support the rapid growth and development that occurs during that period. Yet, millions of vulnerable children all over the world lack access to a diet that is nutritionally adequate, a crisis that has prompted a coalition of nutrition leaders to recommend  scaling-up provision of a novel fortified food-based supplement to prevent child malnutrition and mortality among vulnerable children 6–23 months of age.

Several University of California, Davis, Institute of Global Nutrition (IGN) experts –– Kathryn Dewey, Elizabeth Prado, Christine Stewart and K. Ryan Wessells –– were part of this coalition. The partnership also includes nutrition leaders from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Helen Keller International (HKI), UNICEF, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank and the World Food Programme. Recently, the group published a joint statement in Nature Food and issued a press release.

"We’ve reached this milestone after 20 years of research in which UC Davis took the lead in development and evaluation of the first version of these supplements, creation of a multi-institutional collaborative research project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand the evidence base on efficacy and formation of the coalition focused on scaling-up this intervention,” said Kathryn Dewey, distinguished professor emerita in the Department of Nutrition and corresponding author of the Nature Food statement.

Read the full article from the UC Davis Office of Research website