The Balanced Energy-Protein food/supplementation Technical Advisory Group (BEP-TAG) is an interdisciplinary group of experts in nutrition, maternal health, and public health.
Hosted by the Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Consortium (HMHB), the BEP-TAG aims to review and synthesize evidence, address knowledge gaps, drive innovative research on Balanced Energy-Protein (BEP) food/supplementation, and provide high-fidelity guidance to governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foundations, multilateral organizations, and the private sector.
The BEP-TAG’s mission is to generate evidence and guidance to champion the adoption of BEP food/supplementation as an evidence-based intervention or standard of care in antenatal care programs to improve maternal nutrition and birth outcomes.
The BEP-TAG was created to address malnutrition among pregnant women and its consequences for their babies. BEP food/supplementation has shown promising potential to mitigate the risks of low birth weight, small for gestational age babies, and stillbirths.
BEP intervention is delivered in many forms, such as food, fortified beverages, lipid-based biscuits, and powders. The lack of a universally accepted formulation for BEP food/supplementation inspired the creation of a dedicated TAG. This collaborative effort seeks to synthesize scientific evidence to support the use of BEP food/supplementation for undernourished pregnant women, recommended by antenatal care (ANC) healthcare professionals, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).
The BEP-TAG works in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) BEP Expert group to review existing scientific evidence and drive consensus to address the following:
As a part of the Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Consortium, the BEP-TAG’s activities will include:
The list of members of the BEP-TAG will be posted here when the usual onboarding procedures are completed.
