The Home Fortification Technical Advisory Group
The Home Fortification Technical Advisory Group (HF-TAG) is a global network comprised of stakeholders engaged in home fortification including members from governmental, UN, NGO, private and academic sectors.
Vision: to reduce malnutrition among women and children through home fortification solutions designed to fill the nutrient gap.
Mission: to provide guidance and leadership by advocating and supporting well-designed, effective home fortification interventions at scale for children and women, based on sound technical guidance and best practices.
By providing standards, guidelines, and technical resources to implementers of home fortification programs including government and their supporters, as well as producers of home fortification products, HF-TAG aims to address some of the most important barriers to home fortification and support improved delivery and scale up through both public and market-based channels. Please see our Partners page for more info on the team.
The HF-TAG Secretariat
The host of the HF-TAG Secretariat:
- Provides technical expertise to set the group’s strategy
- Is responsible to maintain the HF-TAG website
- Supports the working group around priority topics
- Supports the creation of HF-TAG resources
- Coordinates the activities of the Executive Committee.
Nutrition International (NI) currently serves as the HFTAG Secretariat. NI succeeded SickKids Centre for Global Child Health (C-GCH) who served as the Secretariat from 2014-2020 and GAIN, the Secretariat from the start of the HF-TAG in 2009-2014.The Executive Committee is co-chaired by Nutrition International and UNICEF and includes individuals from US Centres for Disease Control (CDC), University of California Davis, World Food Program (WFP), Sight and Life, World Bank, and SickKids Centre for Global Child Health
Meet the Team
HFTAG Chair - Mandana Arabi, MD, PhD
In her capacity as Chair of the Home Fortification Technical Advisory Group (HFTAG), Mandana assumes leadership of the Executive Committee, driving forward the efforts to expand the implementation of home fortification through the provision of expert technical guidance, enhanced outreach initiatives, and implementation strategies. Mandana exercises diligent oversight over the HFTAG’s strategic work plan and objectives, while adeptly facilitating group meetings to foster productive collaboration. Furthermore, she ensures that the outcomes generated by the HFTAG harmoniously align with the specific requirements of the targeted vulnerable populations in their pursuit of improved nutrition.
Mandana is a trained medical doctor with a PhD in Nutrition Sciences from Cornell University. She has more than 15 years of experience in public health nutrition, designing, implementing and evaluating nutrition interventions in countries with a high burden of malnutrition. She is the Vice-President, Global Technical Services and Chief Technical Advisor at Nutrition International and has also served as a nutrition advisor for UNICEF, Founding Executive Director of the Nutrition Institute at the New York Academy of Sciences, and the technical advisor for nutrition to the Ministry of Health in Iran.
HFTAG Co-Chair - Grainne Moloney
Grainne serves as the HFTAG Co-Chair and works closely with the HFTAG Chair to collaboratively lead and support the activities and initiatives of the HFTAG. The Co-Chair serves as a vital partner, assisting in the strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and execution of the committee’s goals, objectives, and projects.
Grainne is a Senior Advisor in Early Childhood Nutrition in UNICEF HQ in New York leading on the prevention of all forms of malnutrition and early detection and treatment of wasting in children under 5 years. For over 20 years, she has worked in the UNICEF East and Southern Africa regional office, served as the Chief of the Nutrition with UNICEF Kenya and as the Chief Technical Advisor for FSNAU (FAO) Somalia, as well as a number of INGO across sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia. An Irish national, she holds an MSc in Public Health Nutrition from the LSHTM and a BSc in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from Trinity College Dublin.
HFTAG Coordinator - Kennedy Hilton, MSc.
As coordinator of the HFTAG, Kennedy is responsible for providing organizational support to both the HFTAG secretariat and the executive committee, striving to ensure the overarching objectives of the HFTAG are met. Kennedy further coordinates the strategic meetings of the working group, in addition to maintaining the proper dissemination of communication tools and technical documents related to home fortification.
Kennedy obtained her MSc. degree in Human Health and Nutritional Sciences from the University of Guelph and presently acts as the Coordinator of Global Working Groups at Nutrition International.
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