Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided a $4.9 million grant to a professor in the Milken Institute School of Public Health, to study how nutritional supplements can provide more nourishment for pregnant mothers in southern Nepal.
The team, including researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will focus on how protein and energy supplements affect the health of an infant during pregnancy and early breastfeeding.
Women living in Nepal and areas of South Asia are often undernourished, which can cause their children to develop diabetes and cardiovascular disease later in life.
The team will test a nutritional supplement in 1,800 pregnant women in the Sarlahi District of Nepal. The subjects will be divided into four groups: women receiving a supplement daily during pregnancy and the six months following the delivery, women receiving a supplement only during pregnancy, women receiving a supplement after their baby is born and a control group following a regular diet.
The team feels that providing women with better nutrition during pregnancy and within the first six months following delivery, like nutritional supplements, can improve the quality of their breast milk and their infant’s health.
