Building Momentum for Impact
Through IronUp!, new advances in nutrition, screening, health technology, and cross-sector collaboration are helping to prevent Iron Deficiency Anemia earlier than ever before — accelerating progress toward a future where every child can grow up iron strong.
What does it take to make every child Iron Strong?
At home, nothing may point clearly to a problem. Meals are eaten, days move forward. There may not be any obvious signs that a child is not getting the nutrients they need to thrive.
Even for doctors, IDA symptoms can be difficult to interpret without testing and so, the system has been built around confirmation. A blood test. Potentially a diagnosis. And by the time that happens, for many the condition is already established.
But what if we didn’t have to wait for that moment? What if the absence of visible symptoms was no longer a barrier? For the first time, this is becoming possible.
New advances in digital health technology, combined with improved screening, are helping us detect patterns that were once too subtle to act on, while prevention efforts, better nutrition, scientific knowledge, and innovative solutions are enabling us to respond earlier and more effectively. Parents and families can screen children for IDA at home, helping reduce barriers to accessible screening and empowering parents to make more informed decisions about their child’s iron status.
Through IronUp!, this progress highlights the importance of a more connected approach across awareness, screening, nutrition, and prevention, where each step strengthens the next and earlier insight leads to earlier action.
Together, this system can identify risk sooner, support healthier development, and improve iron intake and absorption through accessible, fortified options.
This is how we move toward a world where every child is free from IDA.
This is where Danone’s collective work begins.
The IronUp! Program: Danone's Framework for Action
Iron Up! is the first global program of its kind that is set to positively impact the health of young children around the world at risk of or impacted by IDA.
Under IronUp!, Danone accelerates its decades-long effort across three foundational pillars of increasing awareness of IDA, partnerships to positively impact health and science-based, consumer-centric nutritional solutions. This is reflected in Danone's public commitment to deliver 14 million screenings between 2026 and 2030 and ambition that screening becomes routine for all children as part of effective IDA prevention.
Make – Partner – Serve is Danone’s strategic framework that guides the IronUp! Program.
Make
IDA top-of-mind for all key stakeholders
Partner
For systemic change
With superior, affordable, unique solutions
Serve
Make
Make focuses on raising awareness of Iron Deficiency Anemia as a serious but often overlooked public health issue, especially for children. Its role is to shift IDA from a “silent condition” to a clearly recognised and prioritised concern across families, healthcare professionals and policymakers.
In practice, this means expanding IDA awareness and nutritional counselling, digital and in-person screening for early risk identification, and prevalence studies, so more children can be identified and supported earlier.
Featured Global Achievements
3.5M iron status/IDA screenings conducted
>100K HCPs reached via education programs
8 different countries represented in prevalence studies
The System-Changing, Multi-Sectoral Approach to IDA in India
Iron Deficiency Anemia is one of India’s most persistent public health challenges. Two years ago, Danone India set out to address the issue through partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem — spanning screening, awareness, policy engagement, and innovation.
What followed was a multi-stakeholder effort involving state governments, healthcare professionals, consumers, and emerging AI tools. The initiative culminated in a record-setting national awareness campaign, with more than 20,000 healthcare professionals committing to help address IDA in India, while also helping build a growing movement around earlier identification and action.
Read the full story to discover how Danone India is working to reshape the fight against Iron Deficiency Anemia at scale.
Partner
Partner focuses on working with governments, health systems, academia, healthcare professionals, non-governmental organizations, philanthropies, and local partners to make IDA prevention and screening part of routine child health pathways. Its role is to move beyond isolated initiatives and help build stronger, more sustainable models for awareness, early risk detection and prevention.
In practice, this includes advocacy, partnerships, studies, expert engagement, and integration of IDA actions into existing maternal and child health systems.
Featured Global Achievements
18 experts convened across 3 consensuses to discuss IDA screening and management
9 government partnershipsand endorsements to support IDA screening and awareness
From Invisible to Integrated: Embedding Iron Deficiency Screening into Routine Child Care in Laos
In Laos, Professor Dr. Alongkone Phengsavanh, an OBGYN, public health expert, and Head of Faculty at University of Health Sciences Vientiane, identified a key gap in child healthcare: IDA was often missed during routine child health visits. In collaboration with the Ministry of Health and UNICEF, he worked with IronUp! to integrate IDA screening into the country’s existing Mother and Child Health “Pink Book” using an Iron Intake Questionnaire (IronQ).
This integration changed practice at scale. Today, the Pink Book example shows how evidence-based advocacy can translate into durable system change, ensuring that Iron Deficiency Anemia is no longer missed during routine child health care in Lao PDR.
Read the full story about Professor Alongkone’s work here.
Serve
Serve focuses on making effective dietary nutritional solutions more accessible to families. Its role is to bridge awareness and screening with superior nutritional solutions supporting optimal daily iron intake and absorption. In practice, this means promoting iron-rich diets, expanding access to affordable iron-fortified products, and effective, clinically proven solutions such as IronBiotics. IronBiotics is Danone's patent-filed combination of Iron, Prebiotics and Vitamin C that supports iron absorption.
Featured Global Achievements
2 Patents Filed (1 for IronBiotics and 1 for the IronUp! Checker)
3 clinical studies testing our digital health tools (IronQ and IronUp! Checker) and IronBiotics *
* The new affordable IronBiotics was tested in a preclinical study and is now testing in a pending clinical study. Info about the pending study can be found here (external website): NCT07324135 on ClinicalTrials.gov
Bringing Optimal Iron Nutrition to Families at Scale through Danone’s IronBiotics
Danone’s patented-filed IronBiotics breakthrough is built around a critical but often overlooked challenge in childhood nutrition: iron intake alone is not enough if the body cannot absorb it effectively. By improving absorption — the missing link between consumption and nutritional benefit — IronBiotics aims to prevent iron deficiency in early life.
IronBiotics is a proprietary blend of prebiotic fibers combined with iron and Vitamin C, designed to help young children better absorb iron and deliver a meaningful nutritional benefit in an effective, affordable, and scalable way.
Following the 2025 launch of Dexolac with IronBiotics in India, Danone expanded its outreach to healthcare professionals and developed consumer education campaigns to improve iron nutrition for families at scale.
Read the full story of Danone's innovative IronBiotics here.
IronUp! Science
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Expert Consensuses on IDA Screening and Management
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Prevalence Studies
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Clinical Studies on IronBiotics
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IronUp! Checker
How IronUp! Is Growing IDA Awareness by Scaling Screenings
IronUp! was designed around a prevention-first approach: making iron deficiency easier to identify early, before it begins to impact child growth, learning, immunity, and long-term well-being.
IronUp! is working to expand access to screening by developing scalable, non-invasive, and digitally enabled approaches that make Iron Deficiency Anemia visible earlier, helping enable prevention through stronger awareness and education, better nutrition, and earlier connection to care.
Screening plays a critical role not only in identifying children at risk, but also in raising awareness among families, healthcare professionals, and public authorities, while generating local data to support broader nutrition and public health efforts.
To scale impact, IronUp! combines three complementary screening pathways: the Iron Intake Questionnaire (IronQ), a simple digital tool that estimates inadequacy of iron intake, a non-invasive Hb Device (by Masimo), and an AI powered tool to predict hemoglobin levels from smartphone images. Together, these tools help expand access to early screening across both clinical and community settings.
Read the full story on how IronUp! is growing IDA awareness here.
Learn more about the screening tools used by IronUp!
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A simple, seven-question risk-screening tool based on a child’s intake of iron-rich foods.
It is designed to help parents and healthcare professionals assess the risk of low iron intake based on diet in children aged 6 months to 6 years and take early action where needed.
It is deployed through both digital and in-person channels, including websites, mobile apps, telehealth platforms, child health booklets, clinics, schools, community health days and commercial events.
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A non-invasive follow-up screening tool, from our partner Masimo, used to measure total hemoglobin levels without a blood draw.
It painlessly and quickly screens for anemia risk in both adults and children.
It is primarily used through physical care and community touchpoints, where it can be integrated into routine interactions with families.
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Currently in development, the IronUp! Checker is Danone's latest non-invasive screening solution, a combination of our IronQ (Iron Intake Questionnaire) and our new AI model that can predict hemoglobin levels from smartphone images for kids 6 months to 6 years. It's interactive and playful to make screening as comfortable as possible for kids, parents, and HCPs alike. The short, guided interaction in which children are asked to stick out their tongue, pull bug-eyed faces or show their teeth, captures visual health indicators to then estimate hemoglobin levels. Coupled with the IronQ, this system provides an initial risk assessment supporting HCPs and parents to make more informed decisions about their child's iron and anemia status.
A Global View into the IronUp! Program
IronUp! already operates across 17 countries, with priority focuses on Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Egypt, Thailand, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, and Madagascar. These markets were selected for high IDA prevalence and Danone’s capacity to act, combining availability of its relevant and affordable nutritional solutions and operational readiness.
In the coming years, IronUp! is ambitiously looking to expand to new geographies and grow where the need and opportunity are the greatest.
Use your cursor to rotate and explore the globe to see how IDA affects communities around the world. Click the red dots to learn more about each region.
Delivering Scale
What began as regional initiatives has evolved into a global effort to accelerate awareness, screenings, and innovation around the world with the goal to help catalyse systemic change in IDA prevention.