Digital Health App
Count Me In is SPOON’s digital health app to identify and address nutrition and feeding challenges in children.
Count Me In is designed specifically for people who support children with disabilities or children living in residential care. After participating in SPOON’s nutrition and feeding training, users track children individually using Count Me In’s three core modules: mealtime, growth, and anemia. Each module includes educational content, assessment tools, and recommendations for intervention. Each one contributes to an individualized care plan for each child.
Mealtime
The app guides users to screen children for feeding difficulties. It recommends specific interventions in positioning, as well as aspects of feeding related to safety, efficiency, skill-building, and social development. When appropriate, Count Me In makes recommendations for caregivers to use specialized techniques for feeding children with disabilities.
Growth
The app maintains an individualized schedule for each child’s growth monitoring. It prompts caregivers to track multiple measurements, as appropriate for each child. The app plots the results on the World Health Organization’s growth charts and uses sophisticated logic to interpret the results. It flags any concerning measurements and prompts caregivers to schedule a follow-up assessment.
Anemia
Iron-deficiency anemia—one of the most common forms of malnutrition—is simple to detect and treat. Count Me In prompts for anemia screenings and provides instructions for measuring hemoglobin. It interprets test results, and if the child is anemic, recommends supplementation and schedules the next follow-up screening.
To date, Count Me In has been used at 99 sites in 12 countries, from Belarus to Vietnam to Zambia. It has been translated into five languages and counting. As of autumn 2022, its users have performed over 20,000 assessments for over 3,500 children. Collecting such a diverse dataset helps us shine a spotlight on the feeding and nutrition needs of a uniquely vulnerable population.
