Mission

OpeN-Global is a not-for profit project initiated in 2018 by King’s College London, and supported by funding from the Medical Research Council (UK) under their “Confidence in Global Nutrition and Health Research” call as part of a suite of activities under the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).

Our mission statement

OpeN-Global is a freely available, online resource aimed at supporting the objective, accurate and detailed assessment of nutritional biomarkers from populations globally.

OpeN-Global is specifically designed to support and enable work in populations from low- and middle-income countries, but the analytical methods presented can be applied to samples from any population group.

OpeN-Global provides a network of experts to support the implementation of biomarker assays in laboratories globally, and to help interpret the data obtained.

Our aim

Our aim is to support the objective, detailed, accurate and high-quality assessment of nutritional biomarkers used in Global Health population surveys and research.

Reference:

The Biomarkers of Nutrition for Development (BOND) project provides detailed evidence-based advice to those with an interest in the role of nutrition in health. Both the assessment of zinc deficiency through the prevalence of stunting, and the household coverage of iodised salt, are BOND-recommended strategies for monitoring population risk of zinc- and iodine-deficiency, respectively. For more information, see the review on zinc and on iodine.

OpeN-Global recognises the importance of the BOND project and the wealth of evidence-based information in its reviews on vitamin A, iron, zinc, iodine, folate and vitamin B12 – all of which are referenced in these pages – and seeks to be a complementary resource providing further signposting and useful information, with a focus on nutritional biomarkers that use human samples.