Adolescence marks a period of rapid growth with high nutritional needs. Good nutrition can fuel optimal physical and mental growth, giving adolescents the strength and focus to study, work and fully participate in their communities. Iron deficiency anaemia is the number one cause of lost disability-adjusted life years in adolescent girls (10–19 yrs.) and boys (10–14 yrs.) globally, but until recently little attention and limited resources have been directed towards reducing anemia and improving adolescent nutrition among vulnerable populations.

This webinar was broadcast live on 20th May 2021 to an audience of over 225 individuals. The event began with Mandana Arabi, Vice President, Global Technical Services, Nutrition International (NI) welcoming everyone and orientating the audience to NI’s work with global partners to implement innovative ideas to improve adolescent health and nutrition, specifically in Asia and Africa.

Three guest speakers then highlighted the critical role of implementation research in designing adolescent nutrition programs. James Lee, Independent Consultant, shared his experiences applying a focused ethnographic study to inform the integration of adolescent nutrition into multi sector programs in Bangladesh. Ermias Mekuria from NI shared how implementation research was used in Ethiopia to translate global guidance on adolescent nutrition to program actions and policies at the national level. Finally, Jen Hatchard from NI, presented the lessons learned from an adolescent nutrition program co-designed and implemented by girls.

Chowdhury Jalal and Shibani Sharma from NI moderated the 15 minute discussion that followed the presentations and posed attendees questions to the three speakers.

We are pleased to share a FREE recording with you, as well as a PDF version of the slides (Introduction, Presentation 1, Presentation 2, Presentation 3).

We hope that you find the webinar informative. We welcome your thoughts, comments and questions on the topic or the webinar itself. Please send any feedback to: info@implementnutrition.org. We also encourage you to share this webinar with anyone who may find it of interest.

Want to learn more about adolescent nutrition? Sign up now for Nutrition International’s free online course here.

Look out for details of upcoming webinars in this collaborative series here.

Permission for Use: This webinar and the associated pdf version of the slides may be copied in any form and used for non-commercial purposes provided that the content of any copy is not altered and, it is clearly indicated that NI/SISN is the originator of this material.

‘Strengthening Global Nutrition Impact Through Collaboration’ is a partnership between SISN and NI involving a number of activities aimed at supporting individuals and organizations to make greater use of implementation science to improve their own implementation and impact. You can read more about this joint initiative here.