JFF Convenes Maternal Nutrition Roundtable at World Health Assembly in Switzerland

As global health leaders increasingly shift their focus from maternal nutrition research to real-world implementation, a Cleveland-based foundation is helping convene the conversation.

On May 22nd, on the sidelines of the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva, the Junaid Family Foundation brought together leading global development organizations, policymakers, and public health experts for a standing-room-only Policy Roundtable on Multiple Micronutrient Supplements (MMS) for Maternal Nutrition. 

The discussion brought together representatives from Pakistan’s Ministry of Health, UNICEF, Kirk Humanitarian, the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization (WHO) and an expert from the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, to examine evolving global best practices on MMS, including current WHO guidance, country implementation experiences, and lessons learned from scale-up efforts to improve maternal and child health outcomes. 

Hosted by Ansir Junaid, Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Cleveland-based Junaid Group, alongside his wife Sufia Junaid, Co-Chair of the Junaid Family Foundation (JFF), the discussion focused on the operational and policy challenges that still stand in the way of broader implementation.

“There is growing global recognition that maternal nutrition deserves greater attention,” said Junaid. The World Health Assembly provided a rare opportunity to bring together global leaders in public health, philanthropy, and implementation in one room to have a candid discussion about both the opportunities and challenges that continue to limit universal access to MMS for pregnant women. We hope the insights and relationships built here will help align stakeholders around evidence-informed scale-up strategies.” 

Micronutrient deficiencies remain a widespread global health challenge, with an estimated two-thirds of women of reproductive age affected worldwide.* Evidence suggests MMS offers a scalable and cost-effective intervention, with some estimates suggesting that up to 600,000 lives could be saved by 2030 through global scale-up.

The discussion underscored that there was a robust evidence base for MMS, supported by implementation experience, country-level adoption, and favorable user acceptability; however, global policy alignment, coordinated programming, and local manufacturing capacity lagged. Participants emphasized the need to fully integrate MMS into antenatal care strategies and health care delivery systems; and collect, collate, and synthesize available knowledge to revise and improve the national and global guidelines on use and scale of MMS.

For the Junaid Family Foundation, which currently supports the MMS program in Pakistan — one of the largest MMS programs in the world — the conversation reflected a broader shift taking place across the global maternal health community: from building awareness around maternal nutrition to determining how implementation should occur at a meaningful scale. And JFF is ready to support the evidence-based implementation of MMS for women globally.