29 February 2024 – The Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Consortium (HMHB) is thrilled to expand its scope to include Balanced Energy-Protein (BEP) interventions for pregnant women alongside its work on Multiple Micronutrient Supplementation (MMS), reflecting its commitment to improving maternal nutrition. As a part of this initiative, HMHB will now host the BEP Technical Advisory Group (BEP-TAG), an interdisciplinary group of experts in nutrition, maternal health, and public health.
Specifically, the BEP-TAG aims to review and synthesize evidence, address knowledge gaps, drive innovative research on BEP interventions, and provide high-fidelity guidance to governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foundations, multilateral organizations, and the private sector. Its mission is to generate evidence and implementation guidance to champion the adoption of BEP as an evidence-based intervention or standard of care in antenatal care programs to improve maternal nutrition and birth outcomes.
Dr. Mihaela Ciulei is the newly recruited Program Manager of the BEP–TAG. She is a nutrition epidemiologist with expertise in improving iron-deficiency anemia among women and children in food-insecure settings. Mihaela holds a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and Clinical and Translational Sciences from Pennsylvania State University.
