The Academy for Educational Development (AED), founded in 1961, connects people throughout the world to opportunities and resources that can improve their lives.

Within AED's Global Health, Population, and Nutrition Group, the AED Center for Nutrition is recognized for its work in nutrition advocacy and maternal and child nutrition. PROFILES, developed over a number of years, has become a nutrition policy and analysis tool of choice in quantifying the importance of sound nutrition for economic and social development.

In terms of PROFILES history, UNICEF-Bangladesh sponsored the first country application of PROFILES in 1992. PROFILES has since been used in a variety of situations by the Asian Development Bank, UNICEF, PAHO, The World Bank, The Micronutrient Initiative, and the Commonwealth Regional Health Secretariat for East, Central and Southern Africa. It also has been implemented in a number of AED projects funded by USAID, including BASICS, LINKAGES, FANTA, MOST, SARA and Measure. French and Spanish versions have also been produced. For more information on country coverage please go to the countries link.

PROFILES is a process for nutrition policy and advocacy designed to demonstrate the contribution that improved nutrition can make to human and economic development.

PROFILES uses current scientific knowledge and interactive computer-based models to project the functional consequences of poor nutrition on important development outcomes such as mortality, morbidity, fertility, school performance, and labor productivity. PROFILES also estimates the costs and benefits of nutrition programs in a given country.

 

PROFILES translates technical nutrition information into terms that make sense to non-experts. It is designed to influence the way policymakers think about public health nutrition issues and the priority they give to investing in nutrition programs.

PROFILES estimates costs and benefits of nutrition programs and can be used to help set priorities, assess the affordability of proposed interventions, compare alternative programs, and allocate resources effectively.

 

PROFILES links nutritional problems, their consequences, and possible interventions. The problems that PROFILES is currently designed to analyze include:

• protein-energy malnutrition
• sub-optimal breastfeeding
• maternal malnutrition
• vitamin A deficiency
• iodine deficiency
• iron deficiency anemia
• low birth weight