Improving Maternal and Infant Nutrition: A Framework for Action

4.42 Work on maternal nutrition is less well developed across all service providersfor example, only around half of Boards are involved in specific projects orprogrammes (including maternal obesity). This requires further consideration asevidence increasingly points to the importance of maternal health in determininglong-term health outcomes for the child and therefore future generations. Whereprogrammes had been developed these appeared to mostly focus on specific groupsor areas e.g. teenage mothers, deprived areas. This would appear to be in line withrecommendations in Equally Well. Provision of training for maternity staff on generalnutrition including the importance of appropriate vitamin supplementation duringpregnancy is lacking across all Boards although work to support implementation ofHealthy Start at national level may provide an opportunity to address this.4.43 Most Boards were involved in programmes to promote nutrition amongst theunder fives. Much of the activity involved working with local authority and communityand voluntary sector partners – for example to deliver projects in nurseries. Onlyhalf of Health Boards had a childhood obesity strategy.4.44 Community and Voluntary sector organisations are playing an important rolein delivering projects and programmes to support maternal and infant nutrition –often working in partnership with Health Boards and Local Authorities. In particularthe organisations surveyed were focusing particularly on nutrition amongst the underfives and in many cases projects were targeted on those considered most at risk.Sustainability of funding is a key issue for these groups and, in this context, theimportance of information on effectiveness cannot be overstated.4.45 Chief Executive Letter 36 ‘Nutrition of women of childbearing age, pregnantwomen and children under five in disadvantaged areas’ with an associated fundingallocation of £19 million was issued to NHS Boards in September 2008, therefore, atthe time of the survey (November/December 2008), local plans were at an earlystage. In the intervening time it is likely that Boards will be much further ahead notonly with their planning processes but with implementation of local programmes.Monitoring of progress with this will provide further insight into progress to improvematernal and infant nutrition.