A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Prevalence of Childhood Undernutrition in North Africa
Elmighrabi, Nagwa Farag, Catharine A. K. Fleming, Mansi Vijaybhai Dhami, et al. PloS One, April 2023
- Nutrition in Humanitarian Contexts
Research Articles
Stunting and wasting was particularly widespread in Sudan, Egypt, Libya, and Morocco while underweight was highest in Sudan.
Systematic Review of Metrics Used to Characterise Dietary Nutrient Supply from Household Consumption and Expenditure Surveys
Tang, Kevin, Katherine P. Adams, Elaine L. Ferguson, et al. Public Health Nutrition, January 2022
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Research Articles
Using the household consumption and expenditure survey (HCES), researchers estimated household dietary nutrient supply to identify metrics reported and parameters used to construct these metrics. They summarized comparisons between estimates derived from the HCES and individual dietary assessment data and explored nutrient inadequacy in different demographic groups. Metrics included nutrient intake per adult-male equivalent, apparent nutrient intake per capita, and nutrient density. Nutrient intakes were generally overestimated.
A Systematic Review of Qualitative Research on Barriers and Facilitators to Exclusive Breastfeeding Practice in Sub-Saharan African Countries
Ejie, Izuchukwu Loveth, George Uchenna Eleje, Moriam Taiwo Chibuzor, et al. International Breastfeeding Journal, June 2021
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Research Articles
Maternal employment is the greatest barrier to exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) while knowledge of the benefits of EBF is the greatest facilitator. Interventions focusing on these and other maternal-infant factors will optimize EBF and improve maternal-child health outcomes.
Tackling Malnutrition: Improving Both Food and Health Systems
Devex, 1,000 Days, May 2021
Events
Nearly one in three people around the world had at least one form of malnutrition before the COVID-19 pandemic, and trends suggest this will rise to one in two people by 2025. The pandemic could result in an additional 11.9 million severely malnourished children, and malnutrition will likely kill more people than the virus itself. Integrating health and nutrition interventions is critical to solving this crisis. This is a webinar.
Take Ten Steps up for Breastfeeding
Global Breastfeeding Collective, August 2022
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Events
Speakers discuss key updates to implementation guidance and responsibilities for a national Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative program and introduce new implementation resources. Several speakers share their experiences using the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. This is a webinar. It is available in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian.
Taking a Food Systems Approach to Policymaking: A Resource for Policymakers
Results for Development, May 2022
- Food Systems
Reports and Tools
Resources explore potential entry points and ways to identify and engage relevant stakeholders and provide practical ideas to improve food systems’ ability to improve nutrition and health. Case studies demonstrate the impacts of policies and programs related to cash and food transfers, food safety, road transport infrastructure, agricultural extension, and land tenure on food system outcomes.
Tanzania’s New National Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Action Plan: What’s New and Why?
USAID Advancing Nutrition, February 2022
- Knowledge Management
Events
The plan outlines multi-sectoral interventions across health; food; education; water, sanitation, and hygiene; and social protection. It addresses root causes of the triple burden of malnutrition, calls for more funding to finance nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions, prioritizes strengthening coordination mechanisms and continuous research and learning, and pushes for accountability for all involved in implementation. This is a webinar and is accompanied by a slide deck and webinar transcript.
Targeted and Innovative Support is Helping Locally Elected Representatives in India Ensure Families Receive Support to Improve Nutrition Outcomes
Alive & Thrive, March 2023
- Capacity Strengthening
Reports and Tools
A new app helps locally elected officials understand the concept of optimal nutrition, learn about public welfare services, understand their role in ensuring that every household can access them, and conduct effective Village Health, Sanitation, and Nutrition Committee meetings.
A Theory of Change for Guiding the Integration of Human-Centered Design Into Global Health Programming
LaFond, Anne, Montana Cherney. Global Health: Science and Practice, November 2021
Research Articles
How do human-centered design and traditional global health practices and mindsets integrate to drive more people-centered, innovative solutions to health challenges and achieve common health sector and global health ecosystem goals? This theory of change provides funders, implementing partners, and designers a tool to understand and apply human-centered design to enhance global health programming.
Thinking Regionally About Industrial Food Fortification
GAIN, April 2021
Events
Regional industrial food fortification program standardization requires aligning standards and regulatory frameworks; strengthening public- and private-sector institutional capacity to implement programs in a sustained way; monitoring guidelines; and cooperation around quality control, compliance, and enforcement. Speakers reflect on successes, challenges, and potential areas for further collaboration. This is a webinar.
To Improve Nutrition Outcomes, Increase Support for Health Workers’ Skill Development
USAID Advancing Nutrition, July 2023
- Capacity Strengthening
Reports and Tools
To detect nutrition issues, support treatment, and facilitate the prevention of malnutrition health workers need the right competencies. Investing in strengthening the nutrition content of pre-service training curricula can have large-scale, sustainable results.
Tomorrow's Agri-Food System: The Connections Between Trade, Food Security, and Nutrition for a Sustainable Diet
International Food Policy Research Institute, December 2022
- Food Systems
Reports and Tools
The article identifies interactions, highlights synergies, and seeks to limit tradeoffs between trade, climate change, and nutrition to improve understanding of how food systems can be transformed to ensure healthy, affordable, and sustainable diets for all. This chapter is behind a paywall.
Tool and Guide for Reviewing the Nutrition Content of Pre-Service Training Curricula
USAID Advancing Nutrition, June 2023
- Capacity Strengthening
Reports and Tools
These resources can be used to assess and revise nutrition content in pre-service training curricula for health workers who provide frontline nutrition services. It is available in English and Russian.
Tool and Guide for Reviewing the Nutrition Content of Pre-Service Training Curricula
USAID Advancing Nutrition, June 2023
- Capacity Strengthening
Reports and Tools
The tool and accompanying guide provide resources for prioritizing cadres of health workers providing frontline nutrition services, identify relevant competencies, determine if the pre-service training curricula address these competencies, and update curricula.
Toolkit for CHW community-based treatment of uncomplicated wasting for children 6-59 months in the context of COVID-19
International Rescue Committee, United Nations Children’s Fund, June 20
- Nutrition and Health Systems
- Nutrition in Humanitarian Contexts
Reports and Tools
To help community health workers effectively adapt to the COVID-19 context, the International Rescue Committee produced this protocol and toolkit for providing treatment for uncomplicated wasting. The program adaptations and recommendations are based on current global COVID-19 guidance and represent the minimum measures required to achieve safe community-based treatment.
Toolkit: Workplace Lactation Support Program
Alive & Thrive, April 2020
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Reports and Tools
This toolkit provides practical advocacy, policy, technical, and financial guidance for employers, employees, governments, and donors working to support lactation in the workplace. It includes detailed case studies and is available in Vietnamese and English.
Tools to Advance Localization: The LEAF and USAID's Locally Led Development Checklist
U.S. Agency for International Development, October 2021
- Capacity Strengthening
Events
The Local Engagement Assessment Framework (LEAF) is a planning and assessment tool to determine the level of ownership by national and community actors at every level of a project. It helps users determine who should be engaged and how, and provides standardized language about ownership to adapt in different contexts. The checklist helps USAID and partners think about what locally led development means in practice throughout the program cycle and across different technical sectors. This is a webinar.
Towards Food Systems Transformation—Five Paradigm Shifts for Healthy, Inclusive, and Sustainable Food Systems
Food Security, October 2021
- Food Systems
Reports and Tools
Avoiding trade-offs and building synergies among health and nutrition, inclusive livelihoods, environmental sustainability, and food system resilience requires fundamental paradigm shifts. These include expanding policy ambitions, harmonizing and improving connectivity between production and consumption goals, strengthening food system performance, and anchoring the food systems governance in inclusive policies and participatory institutions.
Towards Reimagined Technical Assistance: The Current Policy Options and Opportunities for Change
Gates Open Research, December 2020
Reports and Tools
Current efforts to reimagine technical assistance (TA) largely focus on existing challenges with different types of TA and the development of an ideal model, with little attention paid to decision-making and trade-offs in implementation. This article analyzes TA as a policy option for governments and details the limitations, required enabling environment, and practical implications for different TA models to help governments and donors design better TA programs.
Towards Standardised and Valid Anthropometric Indicators of Nutritional Status in Middle Childhood and Adolescence
Lelijveld, Natasha, Rukundo K. Benedict, Stephanie V. Wrottesley, et al. The Lancet, August 2022
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Reports and Tools
Revisiting anthropometric indicators across middle childhood and adolescence will require coordination between the World Health Organization and UNICEF, engagement among national implementers and policy-makers, and partnership with research communities and donors. This article is behind a paywall.
Trade, Nutrition, and Sustainable Food Systems
Thow, Anne Marie, Nicholas Nisbett. The Lancet. August 31, Vol 394 (10200):716-718.
- Food Systems
Research Articles
There is global interest in creating trade policy that better supports sustainable and food and nutrition systems. This paper identifies three key starting points to make progress toward this goal: 1) the public health sector should acknowledge that because trade has the potential to enhance as well as hinder health outcomes, it deserves further attention; 2) public health actors need to be better prepared with the right language to push for better policy; and 3) public health actors need to frame nutrition as a social and political issue--not just a technical one--if they want to bring nutrition to the forefront of development.
The Trade-Offs of Healthy Food from Sustainable Agriculture in the Global South
Balié, Jean. Global Food Security, September 2020
- Food Systems
Research Articles
The framework addresses policy trade-offs between food security, prosperity, environmentally significant policy and market reforms, and tailored public interventions. Policymakers must make decisions about which targets should be met first and which have to be postponed. This article is behind a paywall.
Training Module on Designing and Delivering Gender Responsive Extension and Advisory Services (EAS)
International Rice Research Institute, Centre for Research on Innovation and Science Policy (CRISP), March 2021
Reports and Tools
This module helps trainers design and deliver gender-responsive extension and advisory services for agriculture programs. Some tools can be adapted for breastfeeding interventions.
Transfers, Nutrition Programming, and Economic Well-being: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh
IFPRI, October 2019
- Nutrition in Humanitarian Contexts
Reports and Tools
Little research has been conducted on how leveraging cash transfers with nutrition interventions could impact household economic well-being. This study examined a program in Bangladesh that offered impoverished women transfers of cash and food with and without nutrition behavior change communication. Findings suggest that cash transfers combined with behavior change communications increase not only consumption at the household level, but also household assets through investments.