Throughout their lives, women have unique nutritional needs, particularly during adolescence, pregnancy, and lactation. Improving women’s nutrition during these periods has multiple benefits for maternal health and wellbeing, newborn and young child survival, health, and nutrition, all producing positive effects for future generations.

Maternal nutrition can be improved in multiple ways, all of which require the application of quality social and behavior change techniques to enhance the usefulness of prenatal and postnatal maternal counseling on consuming a healthy diet; improve family and community dialogue and decision-making around food and nutrition; create greater demand for healthy diets for women and their families, including adolescents; increase women’s access to resources; expand gender equality and ensure empowerment of women and adolescent girls; and build women’s leadership in local food, health, and agriculture systems.

On September 14, 2022, MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership and USAID Advancing Nutrition held a webinar to learn about and discuss new USAID resources on social and behavior change and maternal diets. Presenters shared these new resources with implementers and fostered discussions on how they can be used to improve maternal nutrition.

Speakers included

• Laura Itzkowitz, Nutrition Social and Behavior Change Advisor, USAID Bureau for Global Health
• Habtamu Fekadu, MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership / Save the Children
• Marcia Griffiths, MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership / The Manoff Group
• Katherine Dickin, USAID Advancing Nutrition / Cornell University
• Mariam Diakite, USAID Advancing Nutrition / University of California San Diego

Watch a recording of the webinar below.