News

Reducing anemia on a global scale is an urgent priority among many governments. Innovative approaches to end anemia are central to SPRING’s efforts against undernutrition. As part of these efforts, SPRING’s nutrition experts are participating in USAI...

On June 22, 2018, the USAID-funded SPRING project in the Kyrgyz Republic hosted an event in Bishkek to share important lessons and accomplishments of the project from 2014 to 2018. The event was attended by Madamin Karataev, Deputy Minister, Ministry...

The CORE Group’s annual Global Health Practitioner Conference was held June 4th – 7th, 2018 in Bethesda, Maryland. This year, the conference was centered on the theme “Community Health Action for the Humanitarian-Development Nexus.” Three SPRING staf...

Since 2015, SPRING supported the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) in Sierra Leone to build a multi-sectoral coordination platform to address anemia. Efforts began with a Landscape Analysis of Anemia and Anemia-related Programming, revealing t...

This year, two SPRING videos received honorable mentions in the 2018 Pulitzer Global Health Video competition for the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) conference in New York. “Districts Assess Anemia with DATA” was honored in the v...

Micronutrient powders (MNP) are an efficacious intervention to reduce iron deficiency anemia and to fill nutrient gaps in young children, but there is limited published implementation research, which is needed as countries are increasingly implementi...

As part of Sierra Leone’s efforts to build a multisectoral platform to address anemia, SPRING has been providing support to draft the Sierra Leone National Multi-Sectoral Strategy to Prevent and Control Anemia. This is the first strategy developed in...

Nearly 100 people attended SPRING/Uganda’s close out and legacy event to celebrate the project’s five-year journey to achieve results in nutrition. Participants included representatives from the USAID/Uganda Mission, officials from different ministri...

SPRING/Uganda presented on the current status of maize milling nationwide and the way forward for millers who would like to fortify during a dialogue and dissemination event attended by more than 40 stakeholders. During this one-day meeting, millers ...

On September 7, 2017, SPRING/Ghana hosted an event to share important lessons learned and accomplishments in improving maternal and child nutrition outcomes in Ghana from 2014 to 2017. This event was chaired by the Regional Director of the Ghana Heal...

For the last two years, SPRING/Uganda chaired the inspection and enforcement working group of the East Central and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA-HC). To ensure the sustainability of the working group, SPRING transitioned this role to the Uga...

The Health Tutors’ College of Mulago (HTCM) developed and integrated a module on anemia prevention and control interventions into their three-year Bachelor of Medical Education degree program, with SPRING/Uganda’s support. Starting in the 2018/2019 a...

At the end of June, SPRING released new National Anemia Profiles for Bangladesh, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, and Sierra Leone and updated the current profiles for Ethiopia, Ghana, and Peru. Each profile provides a snapshot of a c...

Understanding what causes anemia is critical to design effective programs and monitor impact. At the beginning of July, the Biomarkers Reflecting Inflammation and Nutritional Determinants of Anemia (BRINDA) Project published a supplement in the Ameri...

The Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Nutrition, the first of its kind, was launched on June 20, 2017 with the support of SPRING/Uganda and other USAID-funded partners. USAID implementing partners SPRING, FANTA, Advocacy for Better Health, and Communicat...

SPRING/Uganda conducted key informant interviews with 12 members of Uganda’s National Anemia Working Group (NAWG) on their experiences with cross-sector collaboration and anemia prevention at the national and district levels. The working group member...

Office of the Prime Minister, members of the tenth Parliament of Uganda, and partners are organizing an inaugural Parliamentary Forum on Nutrition to educate lawmakers on the state of nutrition in Uganda. USAID implementing partners SPRING, FANTA, Ad...

SPRING/Uganda exhibited and presented at the inaugural International Symposium on Community Health Workers (CHWs) in Kampala. The theme for this year’s symposium was “the contribution of community health workers towards attainment of Sustainable Deve...

Anemia remains a severe public health problem in Ghana, with 65.7% of children under five and 42.4% of women in reproductive age (WRA) suffering from anemia, according to the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey report (GDHS). The Northern Region...

SPRING/Uganda and Feed the Future’s Commodity Production and Marketing (CPM) activity trained representatives from 22 large- and medium-scale maize millers in the country on good manufacturing practices (GMPs) and how to fortify their maize flour.Dur...

SPRING/Uganda partnered with another USAID-funded project, Regional Health Integration to Enhance Services in Southwest (RHITES/SW), to strengthen efforts to reduce stunting and anemia in the southwestern region of Uganda.In Uganda, anemia affects mo...

To effectively address anemia, countries must develop a context-specific understanding of their anemia situation. SPRING developed “Understanding Anemia: Guidance for Conducting a Landscape Analysis” to provide step-by-step support for gathering and ...

SPRING/Ghana conducted a training of trainers (ToT) workshop for district-level trainers from seven districts—East Gonja, Tolon, Central Gonja, Tatale, Mion, Bawku West, and Kumbungu— in Ghana’s Northern Region to implement the District Assessment To...

SPRING/Kyrgyz Republic provided support and technical assistance to the national deworming working group to update the national clinical protocol on deworming and to update strategies and communications materials for future deworming campaigns and he...

March 8th, International Women’s Day, is a day to celebrate women and the successes they achieve every day around the world, including their contributions to nutrition and agriculture. As the global concept of work continues to change, it’s crucial t...

Micronutrient powder (MNP) distribution is a promising intervention for reducing anemia in young children, but successful implementation requires a better understanding of effective programming. In Uganda, the Ministry of Health is interested in prov...

In partnership with the Private Sector Foundation of Uganda (PSFU), SPRING/Uganda supported representatives from the National Working Group on Food Fortification as well as small- and medium-scale maize millers to travel to Tanzania for a learning ex...

In Uganda, before fortified foods are approved to enter the market, the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) tests them for quality. As more manufacturers get interested in food fortification, the number of fortified samples to test also increa...

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...

SPRING’s District Assessment Tool for Anemia (DATA) increases awareness of anemia and helps districts take action on this prevalent problem. Increasingly, health officials are seeing DATA as a valuable district-level decision making tool.Earlier in t...

CORE Group’s Global Health Practitioner Conference is a place where health advocates come together to collaborate, discuss ideas, and build partnerships to improve life-saving programs. This fall’s themes included adolescent health and nutrition.As p...

In August 2016, SPRING’s Nancy Adero (Technical Advisor of Anemia and Micronutrients) and Danya Sarkar (Nutrition Specialist) conducted district-level workshops to support Uganda’s National Anemia Working Group (NAWG) in piloting the District Assessm...

SPRING/Bangladesh assisted government health clinics in Khulna and Barisal divisions to ensure the successful observance of the National Vitamin A Plus Campaign for children under five on July 16, 2016. Community Nutrition Champions (CNCs), who are g...

Working with a team of eight trained data collectors, SPRING staff in Uganda conducted a midline assessment through key informant interviews with MNP users and distributors to inform efforts to strengthen micronutrient powder (MNP) distribution. Care...

Experts from across several sectors are meeting this week in Bangkok at the Asia regional Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy Global Learning & Evidence Exchange (MSN-GLEE) hosted by SPRING in partnership with USAID. This diverse group of USAID Mission...

SPRING attended the Micronutrient Task Team (MTT) Meeting in Accra, Ghana on February 17, 2016. The MTT is a multi-stakeholder group spearheaded by the Nutrition Department of the Family Health Division of the Ghana Health Service (GHS). Micronutrien...

The regions in the north of Ghana have a high prevalence of anemia among children under five, and pregnant and non-pregnant women of reproductive age. Recognizing the limited anemia screening capacity at Ghana Health Service (GHS) facilities, USAID, ...

SPRING attended the East Africa Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Global Learning and Evidence Exchange (MSN-GLEE) in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania from March 8-10, 2016. The East Africa MSN-GLEE is one of four planned MSN-GLEEs through which USAID is rolling out a...

The inaugural meeting of Sierra Leone’s national anemia working group (NAWG) on February 4, 2016 included government representatives, local and international NGOs, UN partners, and donor staff. This multi-sectoral platform will identify, prioritize, ...

Uganda, like many other developing countries, suffers from a significant burden of iron, vitamin A, and zinc deficiencies. Additionally, iron deficiency anaemia affects almost 50 percent of children between 6 – 23 months of age and 30 percent of wome...

Sight and Life, a humanitarian nutrition think tank with the mission of eradicating malnutrition in women of reproductive age and in their children, and improving the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations, recently published a blog co-writ...

The Government of Sierra Leone disseminated its nationally-representative, comprehensive micronutrient survey (2013 SLMS (PDF, 3.6 MB)) on December 3, 2015 with approximately 50 government, partner, and donor staff participating. The survey was condu...

At the close of the Strengthening Partnerships, Results, and Innovations in Nutrition Globally (SPRING) project’s fourth year of implementation, the project continued to reach a growing number of people with nutrition interventions in SPRING’s seven ...

Recently, Dr. Jane Aceng, the Director General Health Services, launched the home fortification program in Uganda at the Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala. The new program follows the National Infant and Young Child Feeding Guidelines by addressing mi...

In July, the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Uganda and SPRING/Uganda hosted a high-level delegation from Ethiopia to learn more about Uganda’s experience implementing mandatory food fortification. Uganda’s MOH with help from the National Working Group o...

The Kyrgyz Republic has recognized that anemia rates in the country are too high, and is committed to improving anemia especially among pregnant and lactating women and children under two years of age. To support this endeavor, a meeting of the Clini...

"Addressing anemia often requires an integrated approach to effectively combat it," remarked Dr. Acheng Jane Ruth, the Director General of Health Services during her opening remarks at the Multisectoral Anemia Stakeholders' Meeting in Kampala. The me...

“Addressing anemia really is a multisectoral challenge,” remarked BethAnne Moskov, Deputy Director of the Office of Health, Infectious Diseases, and Nutrition in USAID’s Global Health Bureau in her opening speech to the participants of the Multisecto...

Although national vitamin A campaigns have resulted in over 80% coverage of vitamin A distribution throughout Bangladesh, pregnant and lactating women, infants, and young children still consume diets that are not sufficient in vitamin A, with serious...

Although substantial progress has been made against anemia in Uganda, it still exists as a sizable public health problem, especially amongst women of reproductive age and children under 5. To reinvigorate efforts to reduce anemia, SPRING facilitated ...