Download or read book Evaluation of the Meeting the Undernutrition Challenge MUCH Strengthening the enabling environment for food security and nutrition programme written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2022-05-16 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Meeting the Undernutrition Challenge (MUCH) programme, funded jointly by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union, had the overall objective to improve the enabling environment to eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition in Bangladesh. The programme enhanced a national policy shift toward addressing nutrition by improving policy processes with more participation of civil society and subnational stakeholders, enriching policy and programming to address needs throughout the country. The programme supported significant enhancement of technical capacities to gather and analyze food security and nutrition evidence, innovative approaches for engaging students in nutrition learning activities, and improved the links between research and policy-making. Subnational capacity development support was initiated in the middle of the programme, identifying important opportunities for impactful multi-stakeholder collaboration on implementing national policy. The evaluation noted important effort on gender issues, but pointed out that emphasizing women’s empowerment and gender equity within all FSN programming is critical to success. To eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition throughout Bangladesh more work is especially needed in formalizing improved food-sector collaboration and multi-stakeholder governance mechanisms to continuously develop, learn, share and implement good practice at all levels.

Download or read book Global food security written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Development Committee calls for concerted action to curb food wastage in the UK and for expansion of DFID's bilateral nutrition programmes with a particular focus on pregnancy and early years, as part of wider efforts to improve global food security. There is scope for the Government to launch a national consumer campaign to reduce domestic food waste, also setting national targets to curb food waste within the UK food production and retail sectors. Agriculturally-produced biofuels are having a major detrimental impact on global food security by driving higher and more volatile food prices. EU targets requiring 10 per cent of transport energy to be drawn from renewable sources by 2020 are likely to cause dramatic food price increases, and the Government should revise its domestic Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation to specifically exclude agriculturally-produced biofuels. Looking at the impact of rising world population, the Committee praises DFID's significant efforts to meet the considerable unmet need for contraception in many developing nations and urges the UK government to maintain a keen focus on women's reproductive rights within its development assistance programmes. MPs also flag the longer term barriers to development posed by systematic undernutrition. The Committee expresses concern that large corporations are buying up large areas of land in many developing countries previously farmed by smallholders. UK-domiciled corporations should be required to be transparent about land deals. Lastly, MPs focus on the key role that smallholder farmers will play in feeding a growing global population and in reducing rural poverty.

Download or read book 2017 Global Food Policy Report written by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2017-03-23 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IFPRI’s flagship report reviews the major food policy issues, developments, and decisions of 2016, and highlights challenges and opportunities for 2017 at the global and regional levels. This year’s report looks at the impact of rapid urban growth on food security and nutrition, and considers how food systems can be reshaped to benefit both urban and rural populations.

Download or read book Biofortification of Food Crops written by Ummed Singh and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapters presented in this book ‘Biofortification of Food Crops’ depict how agricultural technological interventions have true role in alleviating malnutrition. This book highlights the role of multidisciplinary approaches to cope up with the challenges of micronutrient malnutrition or hidden hunger which is an alarming public health issue in most parts of the world including India. In this endeavour, different biofortification approaches such as agronomic (or ferti-fortification), breeding, biotechnological, physiological, microbial etc. has fulfilled their different mandates of nutrient enrichment of food crops including cereals and pulses. The contents of the book proves that biofortified plants have adequate potential to nourish nutrient depleted soils, help increase crop productivity and provide nutritional benefits to plants, humans and livestock. The content and quality of information presented in this book will definitely provide multiple novel ideas of advance techniques and will stimulate innovative thoughts and directions amongst researchers and policy makers in the field of biofortification. In addition, the contributions presented in the book will be a good source of background knowledge and technical know-how to educate the readers about biofortification. The authors hope that the book entitled “Biofortification of Food Crops” would provide a suitable platform in our collective efforts for an appropriate dialogue among the scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs, policy makers and farmers in reducing the budding issues of malnutrition through novel approaches and means.

Download or read book Stories of Change Rwanda Understanding how Rwanda created an enabling environment for improvements in nutrition and the challenges that remain written by Iruhiriye, Elyse and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2019-08-21 with total page 6 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the context-specific causes of child malnutrition, including those related to political commitment and program and policy coherence, is essential for effectively reducing the prevalence of nutrition-related problems such as stunting and anemia and their subsequent negative impacts on human and national development. Between 2005 and 2015 Rwanda made substantial progress in reducing malnutrition, reducing stunting and anemia among children < 5 years of age by 14 and 15 percentage points, respectively. Despite these improvements, stunting and anemia remain important nutrition issues for young children in Rwanda with the prevalence of stunting (38%) among the highest in the world [8]. Furthermore, stunting reduction has varied across the country with some districts experiencing declines in stunting (“reduced stunting districts”), while in others stunting has either increased or stayed the same (“non-reduced stunting districts”). To facilitate greater progress in reducing child malnutrition in Rwanda, we conducted a Stories of Change Study which aimed to document the drivers of stunting and anemia reduction in Rwanda, understand what may have contributed to the variation in stunting reduction across districts, and to understand the remaining nutrition problems and the potential barriers and facilitators to future progress. The overall goal is for these results to be used by program implementers and policymakers to refine programs and policies to further reduce child malnutrition in Rwanda. This study was modeled after similar studies conducted in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Odisha (India), Nepal, Senegal, and Zambia under the Stories of Change in Nutrition project.

Download or read book The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014 written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org. This book was released on 2015-03-13 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014 presents updated estimates of undernourishment and progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and World Food Summit (WFS) hunger targets. A stock-taking of where we stand on reducing hunger and malnutrition shows that progress in hunger reduction at the global level and in many countries has continued but that substantial additional effort is needed in others. The 2014 report also presents further insights into the suite of food security indicators introduced in 2013 and analyzes in greater depth the dimensions of food security--availability, access, stability and utilization. By measuring food security across these dimensions, the suite of indicators can provide a detailed picture of the food security and nutrition challenges in a country, thus assisting in the design of targeted food security and nutrition interventions. Sustained political commitment at the highest level is a prerequisite for hunger eradication. It entails placing food security and nutrition at the top of the political agenda and creating an enabling environment for improving food security and nutrition. This year's report examines the diverse experiences of seven countries, with a specific focus on the enabling environment for food security and nutrition that reflects commitment and capacities across four dimensions: policies, programs and legal frameworks; mobilization of human and financial resources; coordination mechanisms and partnerships; and evidence-based decision-making.

Download or read book Nourishing millions Stories of change in nutrition Synopsis written by Yosef, Sivan and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-06-29 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the world has seen unprecedented attention and political commitment to addressing malnutrition. Milestones such as the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, the Lancet Maternal and Child Nutrition Series, and the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) have marked the rapid rise of nutrition on the global policy and research agenda. These developments reverse years of relative neglect for nutrition. Undernutrition is a global challenge with huge social and economic costs. It kills millions of young children annually, stunts growth, erodes child development, reduces the amount of schooling children attain, and increases the likelihood of their being poor as adults, if they survive. Stunting persists through a lifetime and beyond—underweight mothers are more likely to give birth to underweight children, perpetuating undernutrition across generations. Undernutrition reduces global gross domestic product by US$1.4–$2.1 trillion a year—the size of the total economy of Africa south of the Sahara.

Download or read book The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018 written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2018-09-14 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New evidence this year corroborates the rise in world hunger observed in this report last year, sending a warning that more action is needed if we aspire to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Updated estimates show the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to prevailing levels from almost a decade ago. Although progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, over 22 percent of children under five years of age are still affected. Other forms of malnutrition are also growing: adult obesity continues to increase in countries irrespective of their income levels, and many countries are coping with multiple forms of malnutrition at the same time – overweight and obesity, as well as anaemia in women, and child stunting and wasting.

Download or read book The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020 written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2020-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Updates for many countries have made it possible to estimate hunger in the world with greater accuracy this year. In particular, newly accessible data enabled the revision of the entire series of undernourishment estimates for China back to 2000, resulting in a substantial downward shift of the series of the number of undernourished in the world. Nevertheless, the revision confirms the trend reported in past editions: the number of people affected by hunger globally has been slowly on the rise since 2014. The report also shows that the burden of malnutrition in all its forms continues to be a challenge. There has been some progress for child stunting, low birthweight and exclusive breastfeeding, but at a pace that is still too slow. Childhood overweight is not improving and adult obesity is on the rise in all regions. The report complements the usual assessment of food security and nutrition with projections of what the world may look like in 2030, if trends of the last decade continue. Projections show that the world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 and, despite some progress, most indicators are also not on track to meet global nutrition targets. The food security and nutritional status of the most vulnerable population groups is likely to deteriorate further due to the health and socio economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report puts a spotlight on diet quality as a critical link between food security and nutrition. Meeting SDG 2 targets will only be possible if people have enough food to eat and if what they are eating is nutritious and affordable. The report also introduces new analysis of the cost and affordability of healthy diets around the world, by region and in different development contexts. It presents valuations of the health and climate-change costs associated with current food consumption patterns, as well as the potential cost savings if food consumption patterns were to shift towards healthy diets that include sustainability considerations. The report then concludes with a discussion of the policies and strategies to transform food systems to ensure affordable healthy diets, as part of the required efforts to end both hunger and all forms of malnutrition.

Download or read book The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019 written by Food and Agriculture Organization and published by United Nations. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World gives updates on the prevalence of undernourishment globally and the absolute number of undernourished, as well as the latest estimates for a number of global nutrition targets. This latest edition looks at the role of economic slowdowns and downturns in the rise of hunger and makes policy recommendations to safeguard food security and nutrition worldwide.

Download or read book Evaluation of the project Developing capacity for strengthening food security and nutrition in selected countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caucasus and Central Asian countries are strongly committed to promoting food security and nutrition among their populations. Although good progress has been made by most countries in the region, food insecurity and malnutrition remain relatively high and greater efforts are needed to address their root causes. Moreover, wide gaps in terms of income, food security and nutrition, and access to social services have caused substantial migration from rural areas to neighbouring countries. The FAO project on developing capacity for strengthening food security and nutrition in selected countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia aims to promote cross-sectoral collaboration between agriculture, health, education and social protection sectors by carrying out six pilot projects in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. These pilots build capacities at field and governmental level and provide an evidence base to build political commitment and coherence for the development of policies, legislations and programmes at the country, regional and global levels. The evaluation concluded that overall the project has been successful. The building of operational capacity among stakeholders and beneficiaries is processing well through the ongoing pilots, while high-level coordination and policy dialogue, and the contribution to global policy processes and frameworks need more time to materialize. The evaluation makes a number of recommendations to further enhance project design, implementation, monitoring and sustainability, and proposes a second phase of at least 1-2 years to consolidate and expand achievements.

Download or read book The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021 written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2021-07-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, several major drivers have put the world off track to ending world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. The challenges have grown with the COVID-19 pandemic and related containment measures. This report presents the first global assessment of food insecurity and malnutrition for 2020 and offers some indication of what hunger might look like by 2030 in a scenario further complicated by the enduring effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also includes new estimates of the cost and affordability of healthy diets, which provide an important link between the food security and nutrition indicators and the analysis of their trends. Altogether, the report highlights the need for a deeper reflection on how to better address the global food security and nutrition situation. To understand how hunger and malnutrition have reached these critical levels, this report draws on the analyses of the past four editions, which have produced a vast, evidence-based body of knowledge of the major drivers behind the recent changes in food security and nutrition. These drivers, which are increasing in frequency and intensity, include conflicts, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns – all exacerbated by the underlying causes of poverty and very high and persistent levels of inequality. In addition, millions of people around the world suffer from food insecurity and different forms of malnutrition because they cannot afford the cost of healthy diets. From a synthesized understanding of this knowledge, updates and additional analyses are generated to create a holistic view of the combined effects of these drivers, both on each other and on food systems, and how they negatively affect food security and nutrition around the world. In turn, the evidence informs an in-depth look at how to move from silo solutions to integrated food systems solutions. In this regard, the report proposes transformative pathways that specifically address the challenges posed by the major drivers, also highlighting the types of policy and investment portfolios required to transform food systems for food security, improved nutrition, and affordable healthy diets for all. The report observes that, while the pandemic has caused major setbacks, there is much to be learned from the vulnerabilities and inequalities it has laid bare. If taken to heart, these new insights and wisdom can help get the world back on track towards the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in all its forms.

Download or read book State Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations for 2015 written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 1372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Agreeing on causes of malnutrition for joint action written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These guidelines for agreeing on causes of malnutrition for joint action are designed to assist professionals involved in development, emergency, and resilience building programmes who seek to promote integrated planning across sectors for sustainable improvements in nutrition. The guidelines present a workshop methodology that uses a Problem and/or Solution Tree approach for: sensitization and training on nutrition, food security and livelihoods; strategic planning for integrated nutrition programmes; designing information and surveillance systems for nutrition and food security; developing partnerships for improving nutrition, food security and livelihoods.

Download or read book What Can We Learn from Nutrition Impact Evaluations written by The World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2010-08-27 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evaluation Summary What Can We Learn from Nutrition Impact Evaluations? High levels of child malnutrition in developing countries contribute to mortality and have long-term consequences for children s cognitive development and earnings as adults. Recent impact evaluations show that many different interventions have had an impact on children s anthropometric outcomes (height, weight, and birth weight), but there is no simple answer to the question What works? to address the problem. Similar interventions have widely different results in different settings, owing to differences in local context, the causes and severity of malnutrition, and the capacity for program implementation. Impact evaluations of programs supported by the Bank, which are generally large-scale, complex inter-ventions in low-capacity settings, show equally variable results. The findings confirm that it should not be assumed that an intervention found effective in a randomized medical setting will have the same effects when implemented under field conditions. There are many robust experimental and quasi-experimental methods for assessing impact under difficult circumstances often found in field settings. The relevance and impact of nutrition impact evaluations could be enhanced by collecting data on service delivery, demand-side behavioral outcomes, and implementation processes to better understand the causal chain and what part of the chain is weak, in parallel with impact evaluations. It is also important to understand better the distribution of impacts, particularly among the poor, and to document better the costs and effectiveness of interventions. High levels of child malnutrition in developing countries are contributing to mortality and present long-term consequences for the survivors. An estimated 178 million children under age 5 in developing countries are stunted (low height for age) and 55 million are wasted (low weight for height). Malnutrition makes children more susceptible to illness and strongly affects child mortality. Beyond the mortality risk in the short run, the developmental delays caused by undernutrition affect children s cognitive outcomes and productive potential as adults. Micronutrient deficiencies vitamin A, iron, zinc, iodine, for example are also common and have significant consequences. Progress in reducing malnutrition has been slow: More than half of countries are not on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving the share of children who are malnou-rished (low weight for age) by 2015. The food price and financial crises are making achievement of this goal even more elusive. The World Bank has recently taken steps to ex-pand its support for nutrition in response to the underlying need and the increased urgency due to the crises. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT REDUCING MALNUTRITION? The increased interest and resources focused on the problem of high and potentially increasing rates of undernutrition raises the question, what do we know about the causes of malnutrition and the in-terventions most likely to reduce it? The medical literature points to the need to inter-vene during gestation and the first two years of life to prevent child malnutrition and its consequences. It suggests that investments in interventions during this window of opportunity among children under 2 are likely to have the greatest benefits. Recently published meta-analyses of the impact evaluation literature point to several interventions found effective for reducing undernutrition in spe-cific settings. However, there are limitations to the generalizability of those reviews findings, particularly in the context of large-scale government programs most likely to be supported by the World Bank. The reviews tend to disproportionately draw on the findings of smaller, controlled experiments; there are few examples of evaluations of large-scale programs, over which there is less control in implementation. In reviewing a large number of studies, interventions, and outcomes, they tend to focus on average impacts. They generally do not explain the magnitude or variability of impacts across or within studies. Very few address the programmatic reasons why some interventions work or don t work, nor do they assess the cost-effectiveness of interventions. Objectives of the Review This paper reviews recent impact evaluations of interventions and programs to improve child anth-ropometric outcomes height, weight, and birth weight with an emphasis on both the findings and limitations of the literature and on understanding what might happen in a non-research setting. It further reviews in greater detail the experience and lessons from evaluations of the impact of World Bank-supported programs on nutrition outcomes. Specifically, the review addresses four questions. First, what can be said about the impact of different interventions on children s anthropometric outcomes? Second, how do these findings vary across settings and within target groups, and what accounts for this variability? Third, what is the evidence of the cost-effectiveness of these interventions? Finally, what have been the lessons from implementing impact evaluations of Bank-supported programs with anthropometric impacts? While there are different dimensions of child nutri-tion that could be explored, the report focuses on child anthropometric outcomes -- weight, height, and birth weight. These are the most common nutrition outcome indicators in the literature and the most frequently monitored by national nutrition programs supported by the World Bank. Low weight for age (underweight) is also the indicator for one of the MDGs. Methodology and Scope Forty-six nutrition impact evaluations published since 2000 were systematically reviewed. These evaluations assessed the impact of diverse interven-tions community nutrition programs, conditional and unconditional cash transfers, early child devel-opment programs, food aid, integrated health and nutrition services, and de-worming. All of the evaluations used research designs that compared the outcomes among those affected by the project to the counterfactual that is, what would have happened to a similar group of people in the absence of the intervention. About half used randomized assignment to create treatment and control groups, while the remainder used matching and various econometric techniques to construct a counterfactual. Among the 46 evaluations, twelve assessed the im-pact of World Bank-supported programs on nutri-tion outcomes in eight countries. While the broader review relies on the analysis of the published impact evaluations as the main source of data, for these twelve evaluations project documents and research outputs were reviewed and World Bank staff, country officials and the evaluators and re-searchers who conducted the studies were interviewed. Findings A wide range of interventions had a positive impact on indicators related to height, weight, wasting, and low birth weight. There were a total of 10 different outcome indica-tors for the four main anthropometric outcomes. A little more than half of the evaluations addressing a height-related indicator found program impacts on at least one group of children, and this was true for about the same share of interventions aimed at improving weight-related and wasting (low weight for height)-related indicators. About three-quarters of the 11 evaluations of interventions that aimed at improving birth weight indicators registered an impact in at least one specification, including five out of seven micronutrient interven-tions. There was no clear pattern of impacts across interventions in every intervention group there were examples of programs that did and did not have an impact on a given indicator, and with varying magnitude. Evaluations of the nutritional impact of programs supported by the World Bank, which are generally large-scale, complex, and implemented in low-capacity settings, show equally variable results. Even controlling for the specific outcome indicator, studies often targeted children of different age groups that might be more or less susceptible to the interventions. It is thus difficult to point to inter-ventions that are systematically more effective than others in reducing malnutrition across diverse set-tings and age groups. Differences in local context, variation in the age of the children studied, the length of exposure to the intervention, and differing methodologies of the studies account for much of the variability in results. Context includes factors like the level and local determinants of malnutrition, differences in the characteristics of beneficiaries (including their age), the availability of service infrastructure, and the implementation capacity of government. Outside of a research setting in the context of a large government program there are many things that can go wrong in either service delivery or the demand response that can compromise impact. Beyond this, there are social factors like the status of women or the presence of civil unrest that can affect outcomes. These findings underscore the conclusion that it should not be assumed that an intervention found effective in a randomized controlled trial in a re-search setting will have the same effects when im-plemented under field conditions in a different set-ting. They also point to the need to understand the prevailing underlying causes of malnutrition in a given setting and the age groups most likely to benefit in selecting an intervention. Further, impact evaluations need to supplement data measuring impact with data on service delivery and demand-side behavioral outcomes to demonstrate the plausibility of the findings, to understand what part of a program works, and to address weak links in the results chain to improve performance. There is scant evidence on the distribution of nutrition impacts who is benefiting and who is not or on the cost-effectiveness of interventions Just because malnutrition is more common among the poor does not mean that they will disproportio-nately benefit from an intervention, particularly if acting on new knowledge or different incentives relies on access to education or quality services. Only a third of the 46 evaluations looked at the distribution of impacts by gender, mother s education, poverty status, or availability of complementary health services. Only nine assessed the impacts on nutritional outcomes of the poor compared with the non-poor. Among the evaluations that did examine variation in results, several found that the children of more educated mothers or in better-off communities are be-nefitting the most. Bank-supported cash transfers, community nutrition, and early child development programs in six of eight countries had some impact on child anthropometric outcomes. Of the 12 impact evaluations of Bank support, all but one were of large-scale government programs with multiple interventions and a long results chain. Three-quarters found a positive impact on anthro-pometric outcomes of children in at least one age group, although the magnitude was in some cases not large or applied to a narrow age group. Most of the impact evaluations involved assessment of completely new programs and involved World Bank researchers. Most used quasi-experimental evaluation designs and two-thirds assessed impact after at most 3 years of program implementation. Only half of the evaluations documented the distribution of impacts and only a third presented information on the costs of the intervention (falling short of cost-effectiveness analysis). In two of the countries (Colombia and the Philippines) the evaluations likely had an impact on government policy or programs. Lessons A number of lessons for development practi-tioners and evaluators arose from the review of impact evaluations of World Bank nutrition support. For task managers: Impact evaluations of interventions that are clearly beyond the means of the government to sustain are of limited relevance. The complexity, costs, and fiscal sustainability of the intervention should figure into the decision as to whether an impact evaluation is warranted. Impact evaluations are often launched for the purpose of evaluating completely new pro-grams, but they may be equally or even more useful in improving the effectiveness of ongo-ing programs. There are methods for obtaining reliable impact evaluation results when randomized assignment of interventions is not possible for political, ethical, or practical reasons. For evaluators: In light of the challenges of evaluating large-scale programs with a long results chain, it is well worth the effort to assess the risks to disruption of the impact evaluation ahead of time and identify mitigation measures. The design and analysis of nutrition impact evaluations need to take into account the likely sensitivity of children of different ages to the intervention. For the purposes of correctly gauging im-pact, it is important to know exactly when delivery of an intervention took place in the field (as opposed to the official start of the program). Evaluations need to be designed to provide evidence for timely decision-making, but with sufficient elapsed time for a plausible impact to have occurred. The relevance of impact evaluations for po-licymakers would be greatly enhanced if im-pact evaluations were to document both the

Download or read book A review of studies examining the link between food insecurity and malnutrition written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A review of 120 studies published since 2006 was undertaken to examine the relationship between food insecurity at the household or individual level and the following nutrition indicators: child stunting, child wasting, low birth weight, exclusive breastfeeding of infants < 6 months of age, anaemia in women of reproductive age, child overweight and adult obesity. While there is some evidence of a direct association between food insecurity and stunting for children in lower-middle and upper-middle income countries, evidence of links between food insecurity and either child wasting or overweight is almost absent, with the exception of an association with overweight among girls in middle- and high-income countries. The obesity–food insecurity link is most predominant among women in high-income countries, while it is almost absent in men. In addition, food insecurity increases the risk for low birth weight in infants and anaemia in women. Methodological concerns that pose challenges for valid comparison of results relate to study design, data analysis techniques, use of different indicators of household/individual food security and malnutrition, and the limited availability of high-quality micro-level data from large-scale surveys. Most studies report correlation rather than causal associations between food insecurity and nutrition indicators; longitudinal micro-level data from large-scale surveys can help establish causal association and capture the dynamic nature of food insecurity. Food insecurity emerges as a predictor of undernutrition as well as overweight and obesity, highlighting the need for multisectoral strategies and policies to combat food insecurity and multiple forms of malnutrition.

Download or read book Food and nutrition security in transforming Ghana A descriptive analysis of national trends and regional patterns written by Van Asselt, Joanna and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2017-06-16 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, Ghana has experienced high economic growth and transformation, which contributed to the nation achieving the Millennium Development Goal targets on reducing extreme poverty and hunger. Against this background and in view of achieving the food and nutrition security targets of the Sustainable Development Goals, Ghana started a process of reviewing its food security and nutrition strategies and policies, including the overarching Zero Hunger Strategy. This discussion paper aims to contribute to this process by providing an update on the state of Ghana’s food and nutrition security. In addition to providing an overview of long-term historical trends at the national level, this analysis provides an overview of regional patterns of food and nutrition insecurity and recent changes across Ghana’s 10 administrative regions. Finally, the analysis identifies regional “hot spots” of food and nutrition insecurity. This paper confirms that Ghana has achieved substantial improvements in food and nutrition security overall, especially over the past decade. Nationwide, progress has been made in improving households’ economic access to food by reducing poverty and extreme poverty and in reducing chronic and acute child undernutrition. However, progress in reducing micronutrient malnutrition—particularly anemia and especially among young children—has been more modest. Across Ghana, large rural-urban gaps and regional differences—mainly between the north and the south—remain for most dimensions of food and nutrition security. In addition, Ghana is increasingly facing new nutrition-related public health problems that result from overnutrition and diets too rich in calories. Overweight and obesity among adults are rising rapidly in both urban and rural areas, leading to an increase in the risk of noncommunicable diseases. The rising double burden of malnutrition—that is, the coexistence of overnutrition and undernutrition, including micronutrient deficiencies—constitutes a challenge to public health and social protection policy. These new nutritional realities may make some existing food and nutrition security policies obsolete or even detrimental to nutrition security.