Brenda de Kok

ALT The Department of Food Technology, Safety and Health at Ghent University seeks a Research Manager/Data Scientist. The position will oversee two large-scale, biomedical research trials conducted in urban and peri-urban Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso—DenBalo and EMPBurkinaFaso. As a key member of the research group, this position supports the implementation of these project including procurement, import/export, biomaterial transfer, data management and curation. These projects often require considerable resources, high levels of functional integration, and will interface with both international Belgium-based scientific staff at UGent as well as Burkinabè implementation colleagues on the field. This role requires a blend of technical expertise, project management skills, and strong skills in data management infrastructure and technologies on R and/or Python. This position reports to the co-Principal Investigators, Dr. Laéticia Toé and Dr. Trenton Dailey-Chwaibóg.

ALT BACKGROUND: Providing balanced energy–protein (BEP) supplements is a promising intervention to improve birth outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs); however, evidence is limited. We aimed to assess the efficacy of fortified BEP supplementation during pregnancy to improve birth outcomes, as compared to iron–folic acid (IFA) tablets, the standard of care. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We conducted an individually randomized controlled efficacy trial in rural Burkina Faso. Pregnant women, aged 15 to 40 years were randomly assigned to receive either fortified BEP supplements and IFA (intervention) or IFA (control). CONCLUSIONS: The MISAME-III trial did not provide evidence that fortified BEP supplementation is efficacious in reducing SGA prevalence. However, the intervention had a small positive effect on other birth outcomes. Additional maternal and biochemical outcomes need to be investigated to provide further evidence on the overall clinical relevance of BEP supplementation.