Micronutrient malnutrition: policies and programs for control and their implications.

Global progress in social and economic development is occurring, although slowly, in the most needy parts of the nonindustrialized world, where nutritional deficiencies, including micronutrients, remain significant public health problems. Until empowering benefits accrue from development spin-offs, policy guidance for purposeful public health actions can help reduce the unconscionable toll on health and quality of life from micronutrient malnutrition and can interrupt its intergenerational debilitating effects on national development. Narrowly focused control programs including homestead production, plant breeding, fortification, and supplementation are in effect, but in general, they have not been holistically planned and integrated into overall development programs. Such integration is needed to ensure sustainability into the next century. A new paradigm is needed, including a new way of thinking by nutrition scientists and program implementers that includes partnerships with the poor in all aspects of program planning and implementation.

Nutri-action analysis as a research strategy to improve nutrition information, education and communication interventions in Asia.

What is lacking in nutrition information, education and communication (IEC) work today is accurate knowledge about the processes which bring about beneficial nutritional behavior changes. In this paper, Nutri-action Analysis is proposed as a mechanism for nutrition planners to gain this knowledge and seek ways to improve the effectiveness of nutrition IEC interventions. It suggests that a more holistic and dynamic approach is necessary to conceptualize nutrition IEC and increase its effectiveness in bringing about changes in behaviors which lead to nutritional status improvement. Nutri-Action Analysis, as a research strategy, is illustrated by a three-stage procedure: (i) pre-action, (ii) action, and (iii) post-action. This process leads investigators to begin conducting a macro-analysis of nutrition IEC in general and within their specific contexts in order to understand the system and identify the best approach to be adopted for a nutrition IEC intervention in their particular context. What is discovered should then be tested in a community-based operational research study using both quantitative and qualitative data so that it is possible to subsequently conduct a synthesis focusing on process determinants.