18 December 2025 – On Thursday, 18 December, from 8:00-9:00 am ET | 2:00-3:00 pm CET, the Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies (HMHB) Consortium and Data for Nutrition hosted a webinar, “Strengthening MMS Monitoring Systems: Insights from Country Experiences.” The session focused on practical strategies to integrate and use multiple micronutrient supplementation (MMS) indicators within national health information systems as more countries transition from iron–folic acid to MMS for pregnant women.
The event brought together global experts, including Rebecca Heidkamp and Melinda Munos of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Manish Gautam from Anweshan, and HMHB’s Rijuta Pandav, with HMHB’s Martin Mwangi as the moderator. Speakers presented global frameworks, country experiences from Nepal, and technical components needed to improve MMS measurement and tracking.
The webinar aimed to strengthen the understanding of MMS monitoring requirements, highlight enablers and gaps in current systems, and identify priority actions to support effective program scale-up. Donors, UN agencies, global health researchers, country health officials, implementation partners, Data for Nutrition community members, and other stakeholders interested in MMS scale-up measurement/ monitoring and maternal and newborn health joined the session.
WATCH THE RECORDING
Key Messages
- Monitoring is not optional: It is a foundational system function for successful MMS scale-up, not an add-on.
- Countries should integrate MMS indicators into existing national systems, avoiding parallel reporting structures that undermine sustainability.
- A small, prioritized set of feasible indicators is essential for reducing the burden while still supporting informed decision-making.
- Monitoring must move beyond coverage to capture adherence, timing, supply chain performance, and service quality, within realistic system constraints.
- Phased transitions require phased monitoring solutions, especially where MMS and IFA coexist.
- Early and continuous engagement with information system authorities, statisticians, and planners is critical.
- There is a strong need for implementation research that focuses specifically on monitoring design, rather than just intervention delivery.
- Global platforms can add value by synthesizing country experiences, identifying gaps, and catalyzing action, but they must complement, not replace, national systems.
- Ultimately, MMS monitoring systems must be designed to inform action, helping countries avoid challenges faced during the scale-up of IFA and ensuring that scale-up translates into real maternal and newborn health gains.