USAID Advancing Nutrition Project Year 3 Summary: Priorities and Key Accomplishments
USAID Advancing Nutrition, February 2022
- Knowledge Management
Reports and Tools
Priorities across teams include micronutrients, infant and young child feeding, healthy diets, and wasting prevention and management. Accomplishments include launching seven new country programs, convening experts to build consensus around progress in measuring nutrition, providing a platform to share learning and experience across countries, and partnering with local stakeholders to strengthen their capacity to sustain nutrition outcomes.
USAID Agency Learning and Evidence Month 2023
USAID Learning Lab, April 2023
- Food Systems
Events
Webinar topics include operational effectiveness; resilience to shocks; climate change; addressing corruption, migration, and forced displacement; diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility; affirmative development; locally led development; and partnering for sustainability. This is a series of webinars.
USAID Breastfeeding: Providing a Healthy Start for a Healthy Future
USAID Advancing Nutrition, 2021
- Knowledge Management
Reports and Tools
This one minute animated video discusses the benefits of breastfeeding for both baby and mother. USAID has worked with partners for more than 40 years to promote breastfeeding in programs and policies, helping families chart productive and prosperous futures for their children, and supporting communities to thrive.
USAID Large-Scale Food Fortification Programming Guide: Supporting Food Fortification at a Country Level and on a Global Scale
Agrilinks, February 2022
- Food Systems
Reports and Tools
The guide helps USAID Bureaus, Missions, and development partners assess specific needs and strategic opportunities to design, implement, monitor and evaluate, and adjust programming to local contexts. It supports progress toward USAID’s vision for sustainable, large-scale food fortification that improves access to adequate and affordable diets.
USAID Local Capacity Development Policy
United States Agency for International Development Learning Lab, October 2020
- Capacity Strengthening
Events
Core local development policy principles include responding to local priorities, leveraging local strengths and assets, being mindful of and mitigating unintended consequences of engagement, and nurturing local ownership through partnerships based on mutuality.
USAID Maternal Nutrition: Preventing Malnutrition in Women and Girls
USAID Advancing Nutrition, December 2021
- Knowledge Management
Reports and Tools
Women and girls have unique nutritional requirements throughout the life cycle, especially during adolescence, before and during pregnancy, and while breastfeeding. USAID investments seek to protect nutrition throughout the life cycle to ensure that all women and children are well-nourished and can live healthy and productive lives. This is a video.
USAID Nawiri Framework
USAID Advancing Nutrition, April 2023
- Knowledge Management
Reports and Tools
This web-based tool captures key learning from an exploration of local drivers of persistent acute malnutrition and design interventions based on evidence, local context, community strengths and assets, and feasibility for government scale-up. This interactive framework allows users to sort through evidence and systems-driven implementation to strengthen community and local government institutions.
USAID Nawiri Framework
USAID Advancing Nutrition, July 2023
- Nutrition in Humanitarian Contexts
Reports and Tools
The web-based tool presents key findings from an exploration of local drivers of persistent acute malnutrition in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands, as well as design interventions based on evidence, local context, community strengths and assets, and scaling feasibility.
USAID Nutrition Report to Congress FY22
USAID, August 2022
- Knowledge Management
Reports and Tools
The report discusses country-specific stunting, wasting, anemia, and breastfeeding gains in the face of COVID-19 shocks and the climate crisis.
USAID Nutrition Resource Hub
USAID Advancing Nutrition, October 2023
- Knowledge Management
Reports and Tools
The Nutrition Resource Hub is a curated collection of over 600 publications, tools, and technical resources from USAID and its projects.
USAID Position Paper on Child Wasting
USAID, June 2023
- Knowledge Management
Reports and Tools
Future investments should include strengthening nutrition as part of primary health care, identifying pathways through which food systems most effectively and efficiently prevent child wasting, improving access to ready-to-use therapeutic food for treatment and specialized nutritious food (SNF) for prevention, supporting the development of sustainable financing strategies for health systems and SNF procurement, and conducting cross-sectoral and cross-bureau analyses and implementation research.
USAID Resource Hub
USAID, n.d.
- Capacity Strengthening
Reports and Tools
The Resource Hub provides insights for new, current, and future local and international partners about how to work with USAID.
USAID Stakeholder Community Meeting on COVID-19’s Impacts on Global Nutrition
USAID, April 2020
- Knowledge Management
- Nutrition in Humanitarian Contexts
Events
In April, USAID nutrition leadership came together to discuss ongoing global challenges facing the nutrition sector. Presenters provided insight into how USAID might adapt and prioritize activities in response to COVID-19. They also shared potential actions for mitigating the impacts of the pandemic on food security, health systems, assistance, and other related programming.
Using a Gender Lens to Understand Eating Behaviors of Adolescent Females Living in Low-income Households in Bangladesh
Blum et al. Maternal & Child Nutrition. May 2019.
- Social and Behavior Change and Gender
Research Articles
To understand individual, social, and environmental factors that influence eating behaviors of adolescent females in Bangladesh, researchers conducted this qualitative study, which found that household food insecurity, gender norms and discrimination, work and school schedules, and an inferior social position influence girls' level of psychological stress as well as food quality, quantity, and frequency. The study found that household food insecurity, gender norms and discrimination, work and school schedules, and an inferior social position influence their level of psychological stress as well as food quality, quantity, and frequency. To decrease adolescent girls’ vulnerability to undernutrition, the study proposes: 1) policies to increase the age of marriage and reduce adolescent pregnancy, 2) programs to ensure adolescents attending school receive adequate nutrition during the day, and 3) methods for prolonging school education to strengthen their economic viability and alter cultural expectations.
Using Health Management Information Systems Data to Contextualize Survey-Based Estimates of Fertility, Mortality, and Wasting
Demographic and Health Surveys Program, April 2020
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
- Nutrition and Health Systems
Reports and Tools
To better understand the validity of DHS Program estimates and trends of reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health and nutrition outcomes, the authors examined the use of routine health facility data to contextualize estimates of fertility, maternal mortality, under-5 mortality, and wasting. They concluded that outcomes must be triangulated with multiple indicators to accurately contextualize them within health systems and non-health systems factors.
Using Height-Adjusted Stunting Prevalence Will Fail Disadvantaged Children Worldwide
The Lancet Global Health, May 2022
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Reports and Tools
This correspondence is a response to S.V. Subramanian and colleagues’ comment in The Lancet on using stunting to monitor nutrition programs. Adjusting for maternal stature in stunting calculations underestimates the contribution of current deficient conditions to a child's stature and is unethical because it will disincentivize commitments to improve living conditions globally.
Using Household Consumption Data to Flag Low Nutrient Access
Mathiassen, Astrid, Margarita Lovon, Barbara Baille, et al. Food and Nutrition Bulletin, October 2022
- Food Systems
Research Articles
Practitioners can use consumption frequency based on household data collected in emergency assessments and through monitoring systems as a proxy for approximating access to vitamin A and iron in humanitarian contexts. This article is behind a paywall.
Validation of Mobile Artificial Intelligence Technology–Assisted Dietary Assessment Tool Against Weighed Records and 24-Hour Recall in Adolescent Females in Ghana
Folson, Gloria K., Boateng Bannerman, Vicentia Atadze, et al. The Journal of Nutrition, August 2023
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Research Articles
The Food Recognition Assistance and Nudging Insights (FRANI) AI–assisted dietary assessment accurately estimated nutrient intakes compared with weighed records. These estimates were at least as accurate as those collected through 24-hour recall. Further improvements in food recognition and portion estimation using FRANI could reduce errors and improve nutrient intake estimations.
Variability in Haemoglobin Concentration by Measurement Tool and Blood Source: An Analysis from Seven Countries
Rappaport Aviva I., Crystal D. Karakochuk, Sonja Y. Hess, et al. Journal of Clinical Pathology, October 2020
- Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Research Articles
Analyses found large variability in haemoglobin concentration measured on capillary or venous blood and using HemoCue Hb 201+ or Hb 301 or automated haematology analyser. It is unclear whether the variation is due to differences in equipment, differences in capillary and venous blood, or factors affecting blood collection techniques. Please note that this resource is behind a paywall.
The View from Development Donor Countries, featuring USAID Chief Nutritionist Shawn Baker
Devex, July 2021
Reports and Tools
While evidence-based solutions exist and progress has been made to improve food systems and nutrition, the pandemic has reduced the delivery of nutrition services and has impacted every system that people rely on for good nutrition. In this video interview, USAID Chief Nutritionist Shawn Baker calls for additional work to strengthen food, health, and social protection systems, and the humanitarian response.
Viewpoint: The Case for a Six-Dimensional Food Security Framework
Clapp, Jennifer, William G. Moseley, Barbara Burlingame, et al. Food Policy, January 2022
- Food Systems
Research Articles
This article makes the case for including agency and sustainability in policy frameworks examining food security in addition to availability, access, utilization, and stability. The impact of widening food system inequalities and growing awareness of the connections between ecological and food systems highlight the importance of these dimensions.
Viewpoint: Rigorous Monitoring Is Necessary to Guide Food System Transformation In the Countdown to the 2030 Global Goals
Food Policy, October 2021
- Food Systems
Reports and Tools
Authors propose a rigorous, science-based monitoring framework centered around diets, nutrition, and health; environment and climate; livelihoods, poverty, and equity; governance; and resilience and sustainability.
Violent Conflict and Breastfeeding: The Case of Iraq
Diwakar, Vidya, Michael Malcolm, George Naufal. Conflict and Health, December 2019
- Nutrition in Humanitarian Contexts
Research Articles
Findings from this study suggest that increases in conflict-related casualties reduce the probability of a child ever beginning and continuing breastfeeding, and that infant formula provided to offer temporary relief impact these trends. Adequate health care and breastfeeding support systems for women are critical in conflict zones.
Virtual Convening on Improving Nutrition among Children with Feeding Difficulties and Children with Disabilities
USAID Advancing Nutrition and UNICEF, May 2022
- Early Childhood Development
Events
This convening engaged experts working in nutrition, health, and disability programming; policy making and advocacy; and research in discussions around opportunities to improve nutritional care for children with feeding difficulties and children with disabilities.