Strategic Goal:

To promote, protect, and support breastfeeding as the foundation of infant nutrition and health in Bangladesh.

Key Actions:

1. Promote exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) for the first six months of life and encourage continued breastfeeding for up to two years or more.

2. Advocate for early initiation of breastfeeding within the first hour of birth.

3. Implement the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) to create breastfeeding-supportive environments in hospitals and clinics.

4. Provide Mother Support Groups (MSGs) and counseling to mothers and caregivers to improve breastfeeding practices at the community level.

5. Advocate for maternity protections in both government and non-government sectors, including formal and informal employment, to ensure extended paid maternity leave, job security, and breastfeeding-friendly workplace policies.

6. Advocate for paternity leave and support systems that enable fathers to participate in breastfeeding support and early childcare, promoting shared responsibilities within families.

7. Raise awareness through national and local advocacy campaigns on the importance of breastfeeding, targeting both rural and urban populations to educate families and communities.

8. Strengthen and enforce breastfeeding-related legislation, including the Breastmilk Substitute (BMS) Act, to safeguard breastfeeding against commercial pressures and unethical marketing practices.

9. Build capacity among healthcare professionals by providing training and continuous education for doctors, nurses, midwives, and community health workers on breastfeeding support and addressing common breastfeeding challenges.

10. Establish and implement monitoring, evaluation, and surveillance systems to assess the effectiveness of breastfeeding programs, identify areas for improvement, and ensure continuous tracking of breastfeeding rates and challenges at the national and community levels.

Strategic Goal:

To ensure the timely introduction of safe, appropriate, nutritious and adequate complementary foods after six months of exclusive breastfeeding.

Key Actions:

1. Promote the introduction of complementary foods at six months, ensuring that these foods are locally sourced, safe, nutritious and non-commercial.

2. Develop and disseminate guidelines and recipes for homemade complementary foods to ensure appropriate growth and development.

3. Conduct training and education programs to teach mothers and caregivers the importance of complementary feeding and how to prepare appropriate meals using locally available ingredients.

4. Ensure food safety practices in the preparation and storage of complementary foods, reducing the risk of infections and malnutrition.

3. Nutrition

Strategic Goal:

To ensure appropriate nutritional status of the mothers, infants, children, adolescents, and the elderly by addressing undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and promoting overall well-being through appropriate (customized for individual case) dietary practices.

Key Actions:

1. Implementation of nutrition education programs that stress the importance of appropriate diets for mothers during pregnancy and lactation, as well as for infants, young children, adolescents, and the elderly, to promote health across all life cycle stages.

2. Collaboration with healthcare policy makers to integrate comprehensive nutrition services into maternal, child, adolescent, and elderly health systems, ensuring that nutrition services and support are part of clinical care.

3. Advocacy for nutrient-rich diets through targeted education and community outreach, focusing on customized diet for reducing stunting, wasting, anemia, and micronutrients malnutrition in vulnerable populations.

4. Support to national and community-based initiatives to improve access to nutritious foods, including justified fortified products and necessary supplementation, to meet the nutritional needs of the population and address specific deficiencies.

Strategic Goal:

To ensure appropriate nutritional status of the mothers, infants, children, adolescents, and the elderly by addressing undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and promoting overall well-being through appropriate (customized for individual case) dietary practices.

Key Actions:

1. Implementation of nutrition education programs that stress the importance of appropriate diets for mothers during pregnancy and lactation, as well as for infants, young children, adolescents, and the elderly, to promote health across all life cycle stages.

2. Collaboration with healthcare policy makers to integrate comprehensive nutrition services into maternal, child, adolescent, and elderly health systems, ensuring that nutrition services and support are part of clinical care.

3. Advocacy for nutrient-rich diets through targeted education and community outreach, focusing on customized diet for reducing stunting, wasting, anemia, and micronutrients malnutrition in vulnerable populations.

4. Support to national and community-based initiatives to improve access to nutritious foods, including justified fortified products and necessary supplementation, to meet the nutritional needs of the population and address specific deficiencies.

Strategic Goal:

To enhance food security and safety across the life cycle—focusing on mothers, infants, children, adolescents, and the elderly—ensuring access to safe, nutritious, and affordable food for all. This goal emphasizes ensuring that all members of society, at all times, have access to adequate food that provides all essential nutrients for healthy living.

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. This includes ensuring that every member of the household, regardless of age or gender, has consistent access to a balanced diet containing all essential nutrients.

Key Actions:

1. Advocacy for policies that improve food security and safety, ensuring that all families, particularly vulnerable populations, including pregnant women, children, adolescents, and the elderly, have access to nutritious adequate safe, and affordable food.
2. Advocacy to ensure the implementation of comprehensive food safety regulations, focusing on the main components of safe food handling, proper labeling, prevention of food contamination, and regular monitoring of food products to protect vulnerable populations such as infants, pregnant women, and the elderly.
3. Education for communities on food safety practices, including safe food handling, preparation, and storage, particularly for complementary feeding and for ensuring adequate nutrition throughout all stages of life.
4. Promotion of household food production through kitchen gardening and the cultivation of nutrient-rich crops, improving food security at the household level for families across all life stages, including mothers and the elderly.

5. Support to national efforts to ensure food availability and quality in both rural and urban areas, addressing the needs of all age groups, from infants to the elderly, by ensuring access to affordable, nutritious food.

Strategic Goal:

To create a health-supportive and environmentally sustainable framework that promotes nutrition and well-being for mothers, infants, children, adolescents, and the elderly.

Key Actions:

1. Integrating breastfeeding and nutrition counseling into maternal, child, adolescent, and elderly health services, ensuring that health services integrate clinical nutrition and care in prevention and curative services.

2. Advocating for clean water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices to improve health outcomes for all age groups, particularly for children during complementary feeding, and to reduce the risk of waterborne diseases.

3. Raising awareness about the impact of pollution, unsafe water, and extreme temperatures on child and maternal health. Promote safe practices such as clean water access, proper sanitation, and pollution control. Encourage protective measures against heat and cold to safeguard children, adolescents, and the elderly from environmental risks.

4. Encouraging sustainable agricultural practices that ensure environmental protection while promoting food security and nutrition, providing healthy environments for current and future generations.

Strategic Goal:

Linking agriculture with nutrition by promoting the production of nutrient-dense foods that support the health and nutrition of mothers, infants, children, adolescents, and the elderly.

Key Actions:

1. Promotion of cultivation and consumption of nutritious crops, such as vegetables, fruits, and small fish, which are essential for complementary feeding, maternal nutrition, and specific dietary needs of growth of adolescents and the protection for elderly.
2. Collaboration with agricultural stakeholders to promote sustainable farming practices that enhance the availability of nutritious foods for families at all stages of life, from infancy to old age.
3. Advocate for policies that align agricultural production with the nutritional needs of vulnerable populations, including pregnant women, young children, adolescents, and the elderly, ensuring food systems support optimal health throughout the life cycle.

4. Linking with DAE, at local level to support small-scale food production through kitchen gardening and self-help local farming initiatives to improve food security and self-sufficiency at the household level, benefiting all age groups.

Strategic Goal:

To integrate immunization as a key component of disease prevention within BBF’s broader approach to improving health and nutrition across all life stages, from infancy through adulthood.

Key Actions:

1. Promote the importance of immunization for infants, children, adolescents, and adults as part of a comprehensive health approach, ensuring that all age groups are protected against preventable diseases that can affect growth and well-being, in alignment with the government’s Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI).
2. Collaboration with national health programs to ensure that children and adults receive timely vaccinations, supporting their overall growth, development, and health.
3. BBF is a pioneer in creating the first-ever Immunization Platform in Bangladesh, called IPCSB (Immunization Platform Civil Society Bangladesh), established in 2014, with the support of CRS and GAVI. BBF won this initiative through an international bidding competition, involving around 200 key organizations in the immunization sector within the platform.
4. Raising awareness among families about the relationship between breastfeeding, scope of KMC, ECD, nutrition, and immunization, emphasizing how these factors work together to improve survival, health, and development throughout life.
5. Training healthcare providers to offer both immunization services and breastfeeding and nutrition counseling during routine healthcare visits, ensuring a holistic approach to health at all stages of life.