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Photo Credit: Wezzie Grace Kenan/Feed the Children

Computer modeling can help policy makers find tailored solutions to address malnutrition in different countries and contexts. The New York Academy of Sciences Nutrition Modeling Consortium (NMC) brought together experts in nutrition modeling to improve the understanding and use of modeling tools for the design and implementation of effective nutrition policies and programs.

USAID Advancing Nutrition has participated in the Nutrition Modeling Consortium from 2018 to the NMC's final meeting in October of 2021. To bring learning from the consortium to the wider global nutrition community, the project hosted several learning and sharing events about nutrition modeling tools. We hosted a webinar on how two tools, Optima Nutrition and MINIMOD, can be used together to assist in understanding how governments, donors, and other key stakeholders can maximize scarce budgetary resources to achieve nutrition outcomes. We also hosted technical presentations on other tools, including PROFILES and nutrition costing tools and the Strengthening Economic Evaluation for Multi-sectoral Strategies for Nutrition (SEEMS-Nutrition) project. The PROFILES and nutrition costing tools generate information that is used to advocate for government and stakeholder investment in and commitment to multi-sectoral nutrition interventions. SEEMS-Nutrition is working to fill information gaps on costs, cost-effectiveness, and benefits of scaling up food system strategies in low-resource areas with high levels of malnutrition. The project has generated new evidence on costs and cost-effectiveness of multi-sectoral projects that can be used for modeling the costs and effectiveness of multi-sectoral nutrition interventions.

USAID Advancing Nutrition collaborated with the Nutrition Modeling Consortium to connect nutrition modelers with policy makers, program designers and implementers, and other end users working across different sectors to share nutrition modeling tools, resources, and experiences to help improve nutrition programming and outcomes. You can learn more about the NMC and a number of modeling tools that can be used to address policy and program questions on the NMC website.

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From 2021-2023, USAID Advancing Nutrition supported the Government of Uganda in advancing the country’s food fortification program.