Global Influence
“The Sustainable Development Goals recognize that early childhood development can help drive the transformation we hope to achieve over the next 15 years”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UN Headquarters, 22 September 2015
The global reach of MDAT
The Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescent’s Health (2016-2030) outlines a number of strategies that need to be put in place in order to help these young children not just survive, but thrive.
One of which is ‘ensuring that all children have access to good quality early-childhood development’. And that’s where the MDAT comes in.
The MDAT enables teams in low and middle income settings around the world to measure the impact of interventions which may affect early child development in the first few years of life.
The MDAT has been used in over 20 countries on more than 8000 children and endorsed by Governments, Researchers, and NGOs such as the Gates Foundation, Save the Children, Medicins Sans Frontieres and World Bank.
How it was developed
MDAT was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Liverpool and the College of Medicine in Malawi.
It was created after a series of detailed studies in Lungwena (the Mangochi region of Malawi) as well as in a number of different areas of Southern Malawi (Nguludi, Namitambo, Bangwe and Mikolongwe).
The MDAT has undergone rigorous research and testing. The first version was created in 2008 and the second in 2010.