Powering women's nutrition for promising futures
Every day, poor nutrition robs girls and women of their full health and potential, denying them their power to grow, to learn, to work, to thrive. It’s a domino effect: beginning before birth, carried into childhood, and passed on potentially through motherhood. Women and girls are especially vulnerable in resource-poor settings, where the burden of malnutrition is already high, leading to devastating consequences for both mother and baby.
The Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Consortium (HMHB), hosted by the Micronutrient Forum, is a growing collective of more than 500 organizations and individuals dedicated to breaking this vicious cycle by powering women’s nutrition for promising futures.
Our Role
As the central platform for evidence, knowledge, collaboration, and advocacy in maternal nutrition, HMHB accelerates progress by fostering collective action on critical priority interventions such as multiple micronutrient supplementation (MMS) and balanced energy protein (BEP) dietary supplementation—proven strategies to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
With a focus on data-driven decision-making, HMHB convenes diverse stakeholders, including country representatives, research and knowledge institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), technical bodies, UN agencies, the private sector, and funders to drive policy change and program implementation.
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Our Vision
Our vision is to ensure that women everywhere have access to critical nutrition interventions and antenatal care that can safeguard their health throughout pregnancy and the postpartum period (the first half of the first 1,000 days) and better ensure that babies are born with a healthy start in life.
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Our mission
Our mission is to improve maternal nutrition through collective action by Consortium members to accelerate the availability and effective use of evidence-based nutrition interventions such as MMS and BEP dietary supplementation in LMICs.
What We Do
The Consortium drives collective action by synthesizing evidence, building consensus, translating knowledge, amplifying advocacy to support partners in triggering policy change, introducing and strengthening maternal nutrition interventions, particularly MMS and BEP dietary supplementation.
Implementing MMS and BEP supplementation provides an opportunity to better integrate nutrition interventions into antenatal care services more broadly as well as catalyze additional delivery improvements.
To guide the collective action of all stakeholders, a Strategic Framework outlines the Consortium’s role and responsibilities, vision, mission, and priorities.
Our History
HMHB originated from the Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Goalkeepers Accelerator hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in 2019. The Accelerator brought together eleven partners from the private sector, academia, civil society, and the United Nations (UN), who committed nearly USD 50 million to accelerate the adoption and implementation of MMS in LMICs.
Building on this momentum, HMHB was launched on 10 March 2021 to bring together global and national stakeholders to improve maternal nutrition, specifically through the effective use of affordable MMS during pregnancy for women in vulnerable communities worldwide.
How We Are Organized
The strength of the HMHB Consortium lies in its members and stakeholders, and in its capacity to harness their collective knowledge, expertise, and action to reach our common goals.
The HMHB Consortium consists of organizations and individuals who wish to contribute to the collective action and joint agenda of HMHB and play a direct or indirect role in improving maternal nutrition through the application of skills, experience, and expertise.
HMHB hosts global Technical Advisory Groups (TAG) on MMS (MMS TAG) and BEP (BEP TAG). These interdisciplinary and diverse TAGs consist of experts in nutrition, maternal health, and public health. The TAGs interpret evidence, address knowledge gaps, and provide high-fidelity practical guidance to governments, NGOs, foundations, multilateral organizations, and the private sector.
The Steering Committee lays out the strategic direction of the Consortium and provides guidance and advice to the Secretariat. The HMHB Steering Committee consists of experts across disciplines and sectors.
The Consortium is supported by a Secretariat hosted by the Micronutrient Forum.