Healthy beginnings, Hopeful futures
World Health Day, celebrated on 7 April 2025, will kick off a year-long campaign on maternal and newborn health. The campaign, titled Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures, will urge governments and the health community to ramp up efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths, and to prioritize women’s longer-term health and well-being.
WHO and partners will also share useful information to support healthy pregnancies and births, and better postnatal health.
Stay tuned for GAIN’s contributions to World Health Day 2025.
The 78th World Health Assembly (WHA) will be held in Geneva, Switzerland from Monday, May 19, 2025 to Tuesday, May 27, 2025.
Watch out for GAIN’s participation at WHA 78 as we push for stronger food systems and healthier communities.
Join us for an engaging discussion on how Enterprise Support Organisations (ESOs) can drive real change in the fight against malnutrition. ESOs are key drivers in strengthening food systems, supporting agri-businesses, and fostering innovation to combat malnutrition. But how can they be better leveraged for impact? Let's find out.
In a significant step towards addressing malnutrition, the United Nations adopted Minimum Dietary Diversity as a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator. Globally, almost 3 billion people are unable to access and afford a healthy diet. Micronutrient deficiencies, caused in large part by inadequate diets is one of the leading factors in malnutrition globally. Poor diets also account for a global rise in non-communicable diseases and contribute significantly to premature mortality, worldwide.
Despite the central importance of healthy diets, until recently, global efforts towards addressing malnutrition lacked standardised metrics to effectively track diet quality. The adoption of Minimum Dietary Diversity in the SDG framework will now give governments, policy makers and international organisations a key tool to formulate evidence-based strategies that can improve diets and help reduce malnutrition.
Packaging can keep foods safe; help make them appealing, convenient, and long-lasting; and convey key information about them to consumers. At the same time, packaging is an important contributor to food system waste and a major driver of certain foods’ prices in LMICs. As such, it is a sector ripe for creative disruption as part of food system transformation – to ensure safe, nutritious foods can reach the consumers who need them, in affordable forms and with limited negative environmental impact. This paper has considered in detail three packaging innovations that could be used to make nutritious foods more accessible to lower-income consumers: single-serve packaging, reusable packaging, and selling products in bulk without individual packaging.
Project Description CASCADE Benin works to support and strengthen national nutrition policies in 20 communes in six of the country’s 12 departments. Implemented by CARE and GAIN in partnership with nine local organizations, the project aligns with the priorities identified in Benin’s National Food and Nutrition Policy (Politique Nationale de l’Alimentation et de la Nutrition (PNAN).
The CAtalyzing Strengthened policy aCtion for heAlthy Diets and resiliencE (CASCADE) focuses on improving nutrition and food security by promoting healthier diets through multisectoral collaboration and evidencebased food and nutrition-related policies.
Project Description
In Uganda approximately 29% and 53% of children below the age of five years are stunted and anemic, respectively. Additionally, one-third (32%) of women aged 15-49 years are anemic. Access to and consumption of healthy diets remains a challenge for women and children
Project Description
The Catalyzing Strengthened policy Action for Healthy Diets and resiliencE (CASCADE) project champions multi-sectoral nutrition strategies, scaling up actions and complementing the Government of Nigeria’s efforts to strengthen diets as described in the National Food and Nutrition Policy and Multi-sectoral Plan of Action for Food and Nutrition. CASCADE brings Nigeria’s private sector agri-food system actors together with
Project Description
The Catalyzing Strengthened policy Action for Healthy Diets and resiliencE (CASCADE) project is strengthening Mozambique’s food and nutrition security by fostering collaboration among government, the private sector, and communities. CASCADE frames its activities in Mozambique’s national Food and Nutrition Security Strategy 2024-2030 and the National Strategy of Food Fortification 2023-2027. The project focuses on reinforcing government capacity for policy coordination, fostering collaboration between the public and private sectors to strengthen nutrition-related businesses, and empower community-based organizations to advocate for better nutrition and agricultural services. These efforts are complemented by ensuring that nutritional outcomes are considered within agriculture and health interventions. Crosscutting to its work, CASCADE is supporting both policymakers to make evidence-based decisions and stakeholders working across Mozambique’s food and nutrition security landscape.
