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Activity design is the process of translating high-level objectives from a Country or Regional Development Cooperation Strategy into action. Formative assessments and research should be applied to activity planning to ensure evidence-driven programming. In addition, activity design should incorporate important development concepts, including but not limited to gender integration, behavior-centered design and youth engagement. The resources below can help guide the design process to incorporate these concepts and support Missions in collecting data aligned with USAID’s nutrition priority areas, including large-scale food fortification, dietary diversity, measurement, social and behavior change, and others.
We found 51 resource(s)
Planning/Formative Assessments
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Assessing the Performance of National Sentinel Food Lists at Subnational Levels in Six Countries (Journal Article)
This paper assesses how well national sentinel lists of the most frequently consumed foods in each food group capture data at subnational levels to measure minimum diet diversity (MDD). It found that national sentinel food lists can provide reliable data at subnational levels for most food groups, with some variability by country and sub-region. Assessing the accuracy of national sentinel food lists, especially for fruits and vegetables, before using them at the subnational level could avoid potentially underestimating dietary diversity and provide more accurate local information for programmes, policy and research.
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Country Profiles Aim to Advance Nurturing Care for Improved Early Childhood Development
These country profiles for Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Rwanda, and Uganda present country-level data, policies, and programs focused on improving nutrition and early childhood development outcomes through the provision of nurturing care.
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Small-Quantity Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplements: What to Communicate to Program Participants
This brief provides information that will help USAID implementing partners develop communication materials to accompany distribution of small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements (SQ-LNS) for children 6–24 months of age and pregnant and breastfeeding women whose diets are nutritionally suboptimal and/or insufficient. SQ-LNS are intended to be consumed in addition to the regular meals pregnant and lactating women and children under age two consume each day.
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Diet Assessment Decision Tool (Resource Collection)
Dietary patterns and nutrient intake are key pieces of information when planning and monitoring nutrition programming. This tool provides existing data sources and data collection tools to help users understand dietary patterns and nutrient intake for evidence-based decision making as part of program design and monitoring.
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Accelerating Nutrition Outcomes through Behavioral Science Applications
Behavioral science offers nutrition services and programs powerful new tools to accelerate nutrition social and behavior change (SBC). USAID Advancing Nutrition collaborated with Breakthrough ACTION, USAID’s global flagship SBC program, to apply behavioral science innovations to three common nutrition SBC cases, including audience segmentation, behavioral design and human-centered design.
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SBC Formative Research Decision Tree
An overview of research methods for gathering information needed to design any nutrition social and behavior change program or activity. The decision tree guides users through three key steps to select the best methods for exploring various research questions.
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Behavioral Barriers to Feeding Young Children During and After Illness
Qualitative research, informed by behavioral science, helps to explain why young children do not receive enough food and breastmilk during and after illness to recover and grow well. The perspectives, experiences, and challenges shared by caregivers, health workers, and others in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo suggest program design possibilities that help families identify concrete actions they can take to put their intentions to feed children well into practice.
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Harnessing Dietary Data to Strengthen Large-Scale Food Fortification Programming around the World
This programming guide helps users strengthen strategic planning and activity design using a methodology to assess diets, markets, and costs of diets to determine evidence-based approaches to large-scale food fortification programming and broader nutrition programming to improve diets and nutrition.
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Social and Behavior Change Competency Assessment: Tool for Resilience Food Security Activities
This tool helps implementing partners of USAID Resilience and Food Security Activities (RFSA) identify core staff’s existing social and behavior change competencies and build a plan to strengthen and develop further skills. It includes a 12-month skill-development plan and outlines a collaborative, step-by-step process for working with outside facilitators. Also available in French.
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Stunting: Considerations for Use as an Indicator in Nutrition Projects
This literature review summarizes strengths and limitations of using stunting as an indicator for nutrition activities. A full understanding of this indicator is important to consider as part of strategic planning exercises
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Beyond Stunting: Complementary Indicators for Monitoring and Evaluating USAID Nutrition Activities
This document introduces approaches and indicators for comprehensively and meaningfully measuring results of nutrition programs to support activity design.
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Conducting Formative Research on Adolescent Nutrition: Key Considerations
Adolescent nutrition is important but often overlooked with little existing data on dietary preferences among adolescents. This document provides best practices on how to conduct high-quality, formative research specific to adolescents to support planning and program design.
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Community Health Worker Competency List for Nutrition Social and Behavior Change
Nutrition project managers and ministries of health can use this list as a starting point for assessing, developing, and evaluating community health workers’ social and behavior change skills. Also available in French.
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Methods, Tools, and Metrics for Evaluating Market Food Environments in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
This report provides a priority list of methods, tools, and metrics for evaluating informal and formal market food environments in low- and middle -income countries.
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Modality Decision Tool: Nutrition Addendum
The Modality Decision Tool (MDT) Nutrition Addendum aids implementing partners to apply a nutrition lens to the selection of appropriate food assistance modalities (cash, vouchers, or in-kind) for the nutritionally vulnerable. This addendum is primarily oriented to USAID/BHA's "supplemental nutrition sub-sector" under their emergency activity guidance, but will also be applicable to resilience food security activities that provide a resource transfer to nutritionally vulnerable populations.
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USAID Advancing Nutrition Adapts to COVID-19
This brief captures lessons learned from USAID’'s flagship nutrition project on adaptations made during the COVID-19 pandemic based on the best real-time evidence available.
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Defining Social and Behavior Change Competencies for Multi-Sectoral Nutrition: A List for Assessing, Developing, and Evaluating Staff Skills
This tool defines important social and behavior change competencies for staff working on nutrition programs. This information can help identify skill gaps across teams, guide hiring decisions, identify areas for capacity strengthening, and track changes in performance over time to strengthen both planning and implementation. Also available in French.
Activity Design
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Strengthening Breastfeeding Counseling Competencies: The Design of a Facility-Based Mentorship Program in Kenya
The Kenya Ministry of Health Division of Family Health, Wellness, and Nutrition; implementing partners; and USAID Advancing Nutrition co-created a breastfeeding counseling mentorship program to reinforce and build the competencies required by health workers to implement the Ten Steps at health facilities offering maternal and newborn services. Key learning is included in this brief.
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Design Innovations Resource Collection: Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Nutrition Social and Behavior Change
Access these resources for inspiration and techniques to solve a challenge or “level up” for greater effectiveness in your nutrition program or services. The resources included here range from case studies, guides, and briefs to job aids, data analyses, and research insights.
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Key Considerations for Engaging Men in Maternal, Infant, and Young Child Nutrition Programming: A Technical Report for USAID Resilience Food Security Activity Implementing Partners
This report for USAID Resilience Food Security Activity implementing partners presents 1) common approaches currently used for engaging men in maternal, infant, and young child nutrition programming, 2) findings from the literature and key informant interviews about barriers, and 3) the key considerations for the design, implementation, monitoring, and sustainability of male engagement activities to minimize the risk of engagement while ensuring women’s agency and safety.
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Small-Quantity Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplements: What to Communicate to Program Participants
This brief provides information that will help USAID implementing partners develop communication materials to accompany distribution of small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements (SQ-LNS) for children 6–24 months of age and pregnant and breastfeeding women whose diets are nutritionally suboptimal and/or insufficient. SQ-LNS are intended to be consumed in addition to the regular meals pregnant and lactating women and children under age two consume each day.
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Integrating Complementary Feeding in Emergencies: A Decision Tool for Concrete Actions at Each Stage of the Humanitarian Program Cycle
This programmatic brief identifies time points through assessment, situation analysis, and programming scope to incorporate considerations for complementary feeding in emergencies and signposting tools from emergency and non-emergency settings.
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Counseling to Support Improved Nutrition and Development Outcomes
Counseling is an essential service to support and improve maternal, infant, and young child nutrition and child development outcomes. USAID Advancing Nutrition has developed a series of counseling-related resources to help strengthen the effectiveness of nutrition counseling in nutrition programming.
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Effectively Measuring Training: Building Knowledge and Skills for Nutrition Programs
This brief provides practical information about how to assess nutrition training programs, utilizing best practices from the capacity strengthening field to create more effective and efficient programs.
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Infant and Young Child Feeding Image Bank (Resource Collection)
This collection of over 900 images is adapted from UNICEF’s Community Infant and Young Child Feeding Counselling Package.These materials have been used in more than 70 countries for counseling and training to promote maternal and child nutrition and can be incorporated into program design and implementation.
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Measuring What it Takes to Provide Care (Resource Collection)
This toolkit helps program teams identify and track measures of intangible resources that caregivers need to provide nurturing care for young children. It also offers guidance to build a comprehensive program theory of change or monitoring and evaluation plan.
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Adolescent Nutrition Resource Bank (Resource Collection)
Adolescent nutrition is an important but often overlooked part of activity design. This collection offers a wide range of technical resources to support various stages of the program cycle, including monitoring and evaluation.
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Generating Demand for Healthy Diets: A Guide to Social Marketing in Nutrition
High-quality and successful marketing campaigns that improve nutrition outcomes include several components. This guide takes program planners and implementers step-by-step through the creation of a successful and well planned marketing campaign.
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Integrating Gender into Nutrition Programs: Program Guide
This guide includes resources and examples for effectively integrating gender at each phase of a nutrition program. This information can be used for designing, implementing, or monitoring programs to strengthen gender integration for improved nutrition outcomes.
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USAID Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Technical Guidance Brief Working within the Food System: Gender Considerations for Achieving Improved Diets
This brief provides guidance for developing and implementing multi-sectoral nutrition programming across agriculture and food systems in support of the U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy and the USAID plan under the strategy. This document is designed for use by agriculture and nutrition staff, both within and outside USAID, to apply technical guidance.
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Nutrition SBC Strategy Checklist
This user-friendly checklist helps implementing partners draft a social and behavior change strategy for nutrition or assess existing ones. These strategies can be incorporated into strategic planning and activity design. Also available in French.
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Behavioral Solutions for Child Feeding During and After Illness
This brief showcases ways to help families continue feeding their young children during periods of illness. The document also includes resources and approaches for community- and facility-based health workers who support families to feed children well during illness and recovery.
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Feeding and Disability Resource Bank (Collection)
This user-friendly collection of materials helps program planners design and implement effective nutrition programs for children with disabilities.
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Food Processing for Improved Diets
This brief guides design and implementation of food processing activities for improved diets and nutrition. It considers food processing within the food system and provides guidance on implementation that is inclusive of a range of actors and processes that can positively impact diets.
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Focusing on Social Norms: A Practical Guide for Nutrition Programmers to Improve Women’s and Children’s Diets
This guide can help plan norm-responsive activities within nutrition-sensitive or nutrition-specific programming and includes tips and tools to improve program outcomes by understanding and responding to social norms at key points in the program cycle.
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Enabling Better Complementary Feeding: Guidance and Workbook
This six-module workbook shows how to use quality social and behavior change (SBC) processes to improve young children's diets. These processes can be used to identify desired outcomes, design research, prepare an SBC strategy, and monitoring and evaluating change.
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Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplements: Evidence and Program Guidance
This brief provides information to inform the design of small- and medium-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplement (LNS-SQ and LNS-MQ) programs. It also explains how LNS can be incorporated to complement or enhance a range of community health and development programs.
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RFS Food Systems Conceptual Framework
This framework helps users consider how best to adopt programming approaches that are inclusive of food systems concepts as part of strategic planning and activity design.
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Strengthening Maternal Nutrition in Health Programs: A Guide for Practitioners
This step-by-step guide helps program planners strengthen maternal nutrition in health services as part of the activity design process. Also available in French.
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Measuring and Monitoring Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Collaboration: Guidance and Considerations
This guidance enables Missions and partners to document and evaluate their collaboration at both the activity and portfolio levels and outlines five types of collaboration that align with specific collaboration goals: networking, cooperation, coordination, coalition, and integration.
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Using Research to Design a Social and Behavior Change Strategy for Multi-Sectoral Nutrition
This tool strengthens activity design by helping organize and distill research findings into an evidence-based social and behavior change strategy. Also available in French.
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Prioritizing Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Behaviors
This document strengthens the design effective social and behavior change interventions by sharpening the focus on fewer behaviors.
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Technical Brief on Costing Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Activities
This brief summarizes guidance for planning, tracking, and assessing costs of multi-sectoral nutrition activities. It highlights resources that USAID Missions and implementing partners may find useful for conceptualizing costing and presents resources with detailed guidance on key phases.
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Responsive Care and Early Learning
The Responsive Care and Early Childhood Learning Addendum is a useful starting point to integrate early childhood development content into infant and young child feeding counseling packages. The package includes training materials, counseling cards, and guidance on planning, adaptation, and implementation.
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Modality Decision Tool: Nutrition Addendum
The Modality Decision Tool (MDT) Nutrition Addendum aids implementing partners to apply a nutrition lens to the selection of appropriate food assistance modalities (cash, vouchers, or in-kind) for the nutritionally vulnerable. This addendum is primarily oriented to USAID/BHA's "supplemental nutrition sub-sector" under their emergency activity guidance, but will also be applicable to resilience food security activities that provide a resource transfer to nutritionally vulnerable populations.
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Program Guidance: Engaging Family Members in Improving Maternal and Child Nutrition
This guidance translates research findings into practical recommendations for interventions that effectively engage family members in the care and feeding of children. When family members are considered as part of the design process, they can be better engaged in ways that support mothers and other primary caregivers and avoid negative consequences. Also available in French.
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Managing Nutrition Myths and Misconceptions During COVID-19
This short guide covers social and behavior change strategies for combating misinformation and supporting programs when responding to fallacies about COVID-19 that affect nutrition.
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Factors That Influence Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Behaviors
This tool helps quickly identify the factors that affect multi-sectoral nutrition behaviors at different levels to inform the design of formative research and social and behavior change activities to improve nutrition outcomes. This tool can also be used to identify factors to measure to ensure programs are making progress toward optimal nutrition behaviors.
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Guidance On SBC For Nutrition During Covid-19: Technical Brief
This short guide covers social and behavior change strategies for combating misinformation and supporting programs when responding to fallacies about COVID-19 that affect nutrition.
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Designing Effective Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Activities Workshop: Facilitator's Guide and Slides
This guide provides materials needed to facilitate nutrition-sensitive agriculture design workshops. Also available in French.