Smiling mother with child waiting for nutrition course in Cambodia
Motivation:
In June 2013 IFPRI’s Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division published a literature review of current knowledge and research needs on the impact of nutrition-sensitive programs in the agriculture, social protection, education and other sectors in the influential Lancet Journal, as part of a new Series on Maternal and Child Nutrition.
Outcomes:
- The Lancet article “Nutrition-sensitive interventions and programmes”, by IFPRI authors Ruel and Alderman, led the Agriculture and Nutrition team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to invite the first author to discuss the paper with Melinda Gates in a closed learning session on Agriculture and Nutrition.
- Richard Greene, senior deputy assistant to the USAID administrator, cited the Lancet series’ influence on the development of the agency’s nutrition strategy (see below).
Richard Greene (Center). Photo by: IFPRI / CC BY-NC-ND
So what is different now? Why is this the time for USAID to act on nutrition?
Things have now evolved. We have a lot of new evidence, based on the 2013 Lancet Series on nutrition. …This is a real compendium of new data, which we want to take advantage of. In addition to looking at nutrition as a health intervention, there’s growing evidence that nutrition needs to be looked at in terms of a multi-sectoral approach … not only health, but also food security, water, hygiene, sanitation, women’s empowerment — all of these relate and should be addressed in terms of a comprehensive nutrition strategy and there’s data to back that up.
Richard Greene, senior deputy assistant to the USAID administrator, interviewed by Michael Igoe for Devex.com (published June 3, 2014 https://www.devex.com/news/the-story-behind-usaid-s-new-nutrition-strategy-83258)
