Photo Credit: WorldFish/M. Yousuf Tushar
MOTIVATION
Undernutrition causes the deaths of millions of young children every year. For children who survive, it disrupts their schooling and means they are likely to remain poor as adults. The human and economic costs are enormous. Transform Nutrition is a six-year research program led by IFPRI with support from DFID. The Transform Nutrition consortium, which includes the Institute of Development Studies, the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh (icddr,b), the Public Health Foundation of India, and Save the Children (UK), has three focal countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and India, along with a global work-stream. It aims to answer the following questions:
- How can direct, nutrition-specific interventions targeted to the critical first 1,000 days of a child’s life be appropriately prioritized, implemented, scaled up, and sustained in different settings?
- How can social protection, agriculture, and women’s empowerment interventions improve nutrition during the 1,000-day window of opportunity?
- How can an enabling environment be promoted, and existing and enhanced political and economic resources be used most effectively to improve nutrition?
RESULTS AND OUTCOMES
In Bangladesh, Transform Nutrition assessed the effectiveness of the government’s National Nutrition Services Program (NNS) delivery. The evaluation presented what works in terms of quality and coverage of services provided under the NNS, and the bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Several changes have been made to the NNS as a result of IFPRI’s study. This research, done in collaboration with icddr,b, was well received by the World Bank, which published the findings in a report, Bangladesh National Nutrition Services: Assessment of Implementation Status, in 2015.
For more information on IFPRI's research and partnerships in Bangladesh, please go to this brochure.
