Course Description

Agenda & Course Materials

About the Presenters

Participants/ Evaluation Results

Presenters:

Molly O'Rourke
Senior Vice President
Hart Research

and

Kaia Lenhart
Senior Vice President
GMBB

Overview
What do people think of when you talk about efforts to reach malnourished children with assistance after the recent earthquake in Haiti? What does a Minister of Finance understand when you stress that undernutrition is reducing GDP by two to three percent annually.

To inform communications and advocacy efforts around nutrition, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently funded research to gauge how maternal, infant and child nutrition is perceived by various audiences in the United States, United Kingdom, Ghana and Nigeria.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, the effort included both qualitative research conducted among policy elites, highly engaged and well-informed members of the general public and decision-makers in the private sector, as well as quantitative surveys among the general public. In Ghana and Nigeria, interviews were held with key influencers and officials.

A discussion of this new research and its implications for the nutrition community will be facilitated by Molly O’Rourke of Hart Research and Kaia Lenhart of GMMB, a political, issue and cause communications firm, with headquarters in Washington, DC. Topics will include:

• Perceptions of malnutrition in donor countries
• Effective framing of messages
• Addressing potential barriers to effective communication and advocacy
• Communicating about solutions
• Examining targeted audiences

For more information, please contact Leslie Elder, HDNHE (lelder@worldbank.org).

Lunch boxes will be provided for the first 25 participants

• Presentation: Infant, Child, and Maternal Nutrition (PDF 162kb)
  Hart Research Associates

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 About the Presenters

Molly O’Rourke is a senior vice president with Hart Research and has been with the company for more than 10 years. In that capacity, she has conducted quantitative and qualitative research projects for a variety of nonprofit organizations, corporations, political candidates, labor unions, and media organizations, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Molly has a special interest in women and politics and conducts ongoing research for EMILY’s List, the women’s political action committee, as one of the lead pollsters for its Women Vote program. Before joining Hart Research, Molly worked as an aide to Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), as an assistant to the president of EMILY’s List, and also for the Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute. Molly graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Brown University and holds a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, where she was awarded a Kellogg Foundation Fellowship.

Kaia Lenhart is a senior vice president at GMMB with more than 17 years of communications, public affairs and political consulting experience, including expertise in strategic communications planning, campaign management, faith-based outreach and fundraising. Kaia currently leads the firm’s expanding portfolio of global health work, serving as a senior strategic advisor to the United Nations Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pneumococcal Awareness Council of Experts (PACE), PATH and Sabin Vaccine Institute. She has also served as a consultant to the Initiative for Global Development, UNAIDS, White Ribbon Alliance, Ipas and Health Metrics Network. Prior to joining GMMB, Kaia directed the strategic communications activities of key program areas at the United Nations Foundation, including children’s health, women and population, the environment, peace, security and human rights. Kaia holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Montana.

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 Participants/Evaluation Results