Nutrition International and UNFPA partner to improve women and adolescent girls’ health

News Hour:


Nutrition International and UNFPA, the United Nations Populations Fund, announced today at the Family Planning Summit 2020 in London, a partnership to provide services integrating family planning and nutrition to improve women and adolescent girls’ health.

As part of its Nutrition Leverage and Influence for Transformation (N-LIFT) initiative, funded by the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada, Nutrition International will invest up to $2 million (CAD) to incorporate nutrition components into existing UNFPA sexual and reproductive health services.

The partnership hopes to increase the benefits to women and girls reached by UNFPA family planning services by offering a range of nutrition interventions.

“Access to essential family planning and nutrition increases the potential of adolescent girls to grow, learn, earn and lead,” said the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Canada’s Minister for International Development and La Francophonie. “Finding innovative ways to better reach them with essential services is key to ending intergenerational cycles of poor health, malnutrition and poverty.”

“Integrating nutrition into family planning programming makes sense, because they mutually reinforce each other,” says Luz Maria De-Regil, Director of Global Technical Services and Chief Technical Advisor, Nutrition International. “We are excited about this new partnership with UNFPA because integrating those two components will be truly game changing for hundreds of thousands of women and girls, and potentially millions more.”

This investment will initially focus on integrating nutrition and family planning in Nigeria and Senegal. Leveraging UNFPA family planning and maternal health services, the partnership has the potential to scale up to reach 15 million women and girls annually.

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