HKI's Shawn Baker honored for groundbreaking research on malnutrition

At two recent conferences on innovative malnutrition research organized by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, Helen Keller International's programs to reduce malnutrition were awarded first prize by government officials, NGOs, researchers and private sector representatives.

On November 3, 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya, HKI's Shawn Baker, VP & Regional Director for Africa, was awarded the first prize of 25,000 Danish Kroners for groundbreaking research on his presentation: "Vitamin A supplementation for child survival in sub-Saharan Africa: successes, challenges and next steps."

Mr. Baker commented on the significant value of the conference, "This prize and conference are hugely encouraging and demonstrate the importance of working together to identify, highlight and implement effective solutions to the challenges of malnutrition."

On November 11, 2009 in New York City, HKI's Shawn Baker, along with collaborators Kenneth H. Brown, Sonja Y. Hess and Stephen A. Vosti of the University of California, Davis, were awarded first prize for their paper on "Therapeutic Zinc Supplementation."

The winning paper builds on previous research completed by the International Zinc Nutrition Consultative Group (IZiNCG), showing that zinc supplementation reduces the incidence of diarrhea and pneumonia, the two major killers of children in developing countries. The current analyses examined the relative costs and likely impact of different types of public health programs for delivering supplemental zinc to young children.

Copenhagen Consensus Center director Bjørn Lomborg said, "The Copenhagen Consensus malnutrition conferences... were a huge success -- but we need to do a lot more to ensure that malnutrition interventions remain on the agenda.

"It was inspirational to see the excellent research coming from this field. It was great to be able to recognize and applaud some of those researchers, and to release research that will be of concrete help to donors, aid groups, NGOs and governments." .