Wednesday, June 22, 2016

CORE Group's Social and Behavior Change Working Group.

The African Farmer Game (www.africanfarmergame.org) is a computer-based simulation designed to give players the experience of living as a small farmer in Sub-Saharan Africa, where they must make complex decisions about their domestic and agricultural practices, household nutrition, and marketing and related livelihood activities in an uncertain and risk-prone environment. In this webinar, creators of the game presented the latest ...Read More

Thursday, June 2, 2016

CORE Group and CORDS (Connection Organizations for Regional Disease Surveillance).

Frontline experts presented key findings and action recommendations on surveillance, diagnosis, and treatment of visceral and cutaneous leishmaniasis from the Leishmaniasis Gap Analysis Report and Action Plan facilitated by Connecting Organizations for Regional Surveillance (CORDS) with its partners and networks in Albania, Jordan, and Pakistan.  Lessons learned were used to catalyse discussions on current treatment and response challenges to Zika and ...Read More

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

CORE Group's Nutrition Working Group

This webinar presented some research and programmatic findings on the role of wild foods as a health and dietary practice. Wild, or indigenous foods, have long been a “hidden harvest” for many populations across Africa, undetected and underemphasized by international development organizations as well as government nutrition initiatives. Women and children in particular are often tasked with collecting and preparing ...Read More

Thursday, April 14, 2016

CORE Group's Zika Coordinated Response Group.

The mosquito-borne Zika virus has spread explosively throughout Latin America and the Caribbean in recent months. There has been a concurrent increase in birth defects and neurological disorders in Zika affected areas. The rapidly evolving research indicates there is evidence of an association with Zika virus infection during pregnancy, leading WHO to declare a public health emergency. PAHO, WHO, and ...Read More

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

CORE Group's Nutrition Working Group

In the last few years, there has been rising interest in and use of dietary diversity indicators, which provide one relatively simple proxy measure for micronutrient density or adequacy of diets. Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organization and USAID’s Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance III Project have supported development of a new indicator and guide: Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women: ...Read More

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

CORE Group

Each year 3 million newborns die globally, and infection causes approximately 15% of these deaths. Poor hygiene and lack of antisepsis at birth and in the first week of life increases the risk of deadly but preventable infections. Ensuring optimal cord care, including use of chlorhexidine, is a crucial strategy to prevent life-threatening sepsis and cord infections and avert preventable ...Read More

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

CORE Group's Nutrition Working Group

Since 2010, Action Contre la Faim and a scientific committee led by a small group of researchers (Tufts, IRD, WFP) and technical experts have collaborated to develop a methodology to analyze the complex, dynamic, locally-specific causes of undernutrition. The Link NCA methodology for Nutrition Causal Analysis is a mixed-methods, structured, participatory methodology. Community-level qualitative enquiry sheds light on context-specific causes ...Read More

Thursday, February 11, 2016

CORE Group's M&E Working Group

During this webinar, Alfonso Rosales discussed the lack of systematic evidence as to how women and families identify maternal/newborn complications, the factors behind decision making to seek care, or the role of cultural beliefs as drivers of individual decisions, perceptions, ideas, and behavior. This area needs more exploration to understand what drives decisions (both facilitators and barriers) at family and ...Read More

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

CORE Group

Government and donor-supported social programs in developing countries prioritize serving the poor: those most in need, most at risk, or most marginalized. However, most programs never learn how well they have done, let alone being able to assess how they’re doing at the time of service provision. The EquityTool provides an easy-to-use, easy-to-interpret, free method to assess the wealth of ...Read More

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

CORE Group's Nutrition Working Group

Family planning and reproductive health services have been prioritized in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy 2014¬–2025 as important interventions that address the underlying and systemic causes of malnutrition. The potential for integrated approaches and solutions to complex and multifaceted development challenges is also being closely examined in the post 2015 development era with the adoption ...Read More

Monday, November 16, 2015

the CORE Group and USAID

The Acting on the Call report, released in 2014, lays out a roadmap in 24 priority countries to scale up proven, life-saving interventions that can save 15 million children and 600,000 women by 2020. The 2015 Acting on the Call report gives an update on progress and includes additional information on how USAID will reach 38 million women with increased ...Read More

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

the CORE Group

Using examples from three recently evaluated Child Survival projects in Cambodia, Mozambique and Benin, and recently published literature, Paul Freeman discussed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and costs of community participation towards advocating that an emphasis on community engagement should be an essential part of all community level Child Survival programs.  In Cambodia, child and maternal nutrition (including the Hearth Approach) and ...Read More

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

the CORE Group M&E and Child Community Health Working Groups

Despite the growing evidence linking social capital to improvements in health and health behaviors, reliable measures of social capital are lacking in low-income countries. To accurately measure social capital in new contexts, there is a need to validate social capital survey questions in each new cultural setting. In this webinar, Dr. Story described the process of validating social capital survey ...Read More

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

the CORE Group M&E and Child Community Health Working Groups

Despite the growing evidence linking social capital to improvements in health and health behaviors, reliable measures of social capital are lacking in low-income countries. To accurately measure social capital in new contexts, there is a need to validate social capital survey questions in each new cultural setting. In this webinar, Dr. Story described the process of validating social capital survey ...Read More

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Based on the private sector’s consumer product testing methods, The Manoff Group developed Trials of Improved Practices (TIPs) to enhance the voice of potential program participants in its formative research on young child feeding in Indonesia 40 years ago. Based on the wealth of insights provided by this method, TIPs is now widely used by many organizations to explore a ...Read More

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Based on the private sector’s consumer product testing methods, The Manoff Group developed Trials of Improved Practices (TIPs) to enhance the voice of potential program participants in its formative research on young child feeding in Indonesia 40 years ago. Based on the wealth of insights provided by this method, TIPs is now widely used by many organizations to explore a ...Read More

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

the CORE Group SBC Working Groups

During this webinar, presenters shared the results of CORE Group and WI-HER LLC’s TOPS-funded Enhancing Nutrition and Food Security during the First 1000 Days through Gender-Sensitive Social and Behavioral Change Technical Resource Guide and Technical Brief. These materials were designed to strengthen the capacity of development practitioners working in nutrition and food security to plan, implement, and evaluate gender-sensitive social and behavioral change (SBC) programming ...Read More

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

the CORE Group SBC & Nutrition Working Groups

During this webinar, Amy shared the results of her research on a nutrition toolkit consisting of a demarcated feeding bowl, slotted spoon, and accompanying pictorial counseling card for use during the first 1000 days to improve maternal and child nutrition.  In India and Kenya, this simple feeding toolkit demonstrated high acceptability, feasibility, and the potential to improve nutrition of mothers during ...Read More

Monday, February 2, 2015

the CORE Group Nutrition Working Group

World Vision has been implementing PD/Hearth since 1999. In 2010, an evaluation was conducted in 8 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Overall, results from the evaluation showed that countries with stronger implementation of technical components had better results. This emphasized need for stronger technical preparation and support throughout the program. WV decided to improve the quality of PD/Hearth ...Read More

Thursday, January 8, 2015

the CORE Group Social & Behavior Change and Nutrition Working Groups

The CORE Group Nutrition and Social and Behavior Change Working Groups, in collaboration with the USAID WASHplus Project, hosted a one-hour webinar on multi-sectoral approaches to improve child growth and development; with a focus on improving the community knowledge of practice and sharing integration efforts for ECD, nutrition and WASH integration. The Clean, Fed & Nurtured community of practice explained ...Read More