Human milk bank in emergency – donor milk as a bridge to mothers own milk.

Alessandro Iellamo is the senior emergency nutrition adviser for Family Health International 360 (Fhi360) supporting and a maternal, infant, and young child nutrition specialist. He has extensive expertise in nutrition and infant and young child feeding (IYCF) policies and practices, particularly in emergencies, the WHO International Code, BFHI, the Operational Guidance for Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies and other global tools. He has worked with the WHO’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG) on the International Code and assisted the International Baby Food Action Network with the development of the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative (WBTI) and the World Breastfeeding Costing Tool (WBCi) and IYCF policy tools. He has also been involved in research on maternal, IYCF policies, practices, and programmes, including work environments, International Code implementation, and financial aspects of the WHO/UNICEF Global Strategy on IYCF. His expertise in nutrition, emergency nutrition, and IYCF has supported humanitarian work in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia and South-East Asia. He has led the development of recent IYCF-E tools and guidance documents and facilitated international and national policies and guidance development processes. Recently, he has been engaged with IYCF related policy issues in high-income countries including Ukraine, Poland, Italy, Australia, and Japan. Alessandro has led the planning, organization and facilitation of webinars and workshops, including the independent dialogue hosted by the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions and the ANU Gender Institute at the Australian National University. At the same time has provide support for the development of the Mother’s Milk Tool and the ongoing development of the Green Feeding Tool.

is Team Lead for PATH’s Integrated Maternal and Child Health and Development program and Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. She has over 20 years of experience in assessing and supporting methods for optimal infant and young child feeding. Her work has largely focused on conceptualizing appropriate infant feeding methods for vulnerable infants in developing countries, including HIV affected infants. In her current role, Dr. Israel-Ballard leads the human milk initiative at PATH. This has included developing an integrated newborn nutrition model, establishing global teams for working with local governments to ensure sustainable implementation, conducting advocacy for human milk banking as a cost-effective strategy for improving health of vulnerable infants, establishing a global technical advisory group, leading rigorous evaluations to determine impact, and developing innovative human milk banking technologies for resource-limited settings. She has also led programs to support implementation of nutrition programs for local governments and partners and focuses on innovative approaches to improve infant health through identifying and assessing the feasibility of novel technologies. She has considerable international experience, working at all health levels in Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Vietnam and India.

Kimberly Mansen, MSPH, RDN is a Nutrition Technical Lead with PATH’s Integrated Maternal and Child Health and Development program. She is trained as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, having experience both clinically and in the global health field. She currently focuses on improving maternal, infant, and young child nutrition, particularly by strengthening systems to improve maternal lactation support and to ensure all infants receive human milk, including vulnerable neonates. She helps to lead PATH’s Newborn Nutrition portfolio, including human milk banking activities and consisting of implementation, advocacy, research, and innovation. Her work at PATH has spread across multiple settings, including South Africa, Vietnam, Kenya, and India. Previous to PATH, she served as a Field Coordinator for Operations Research for ensuring food security in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.