Abstract
Nutrition‐sensitive interventions to improve overall diet quality are increasingly needed to improve maternal and child health. This study demonstrates feasibility of a structured process to leverage local expertise in formulating programmes tailored for current circumstances in South Asia and Africa. We assembled 41 stakeholders in 2 regional workshops and followed a prespecified protocol to elicit programme designs listing the human and other resources required, the intervention's mechanism for impact on diets, target foods and nutrients, target populations, and contact information for partners needed to implement the desired programme. Via this protocol, participants described 48 distinct interventions, which we then compared against international recommendations and global goals. Local stakeholders' priorities focused on postharvest food systems to improve access to nutrient‐dense products (75% of the 48 programmes) and on production of animal sourced foods (58%), as well as education and social marketing (23%) and direct transfers to meet food needs (12.5%). Each programme included an average of 3.2 distinct elements aligned with those recommended by United Nations system agencies in the Framework for Action produced by the Second International Conference on Nutrition in 2014 and the Compendium of Actions for Nutrition developed for the Renewed Efforts Against Child Hunger initiative in 2016. Our results demonstrate that a participatory process can help local experts identify their own priorities for future investments, as a first step in a novel process of rigorous, transparent, and independent priority setting to improve diets among those at greatest risk of undernutrition.
Highlights
IntroductionThe contribution of low diet quality to poor maternal and child health outcomes (Allen, 2013)
INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATIONSuboptimal diets are among the world's leading causes of death and disability (Black et al, 2008; Steiber et al, 2015), including throughAbbreviations used: ICN2, Second International Conference on Nutrition; SA, South Asia; Sub‐ Saharan Africa (SSA), Sub‐Saharan Africa aMembers of the Global Nutrition and Policy Consortium are listed in Appendix A and should be regarded as collaborators for indexing purposes.the contribution of low diet quality to poor maternal and child health outcomes (Allen, 2013)
Associations between suboptimal diet and maternal and child health outcomes are especially important in Sub‐ Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia, where current diets contribute to widespread stunting, wasting, and intrauterine growth restriction as well as micronutrient deficiencies in women and children (Black et al, 2008)
Summary
The contribution of low diet quality to poor maternal and child health outcomes (Allen, 2013). Associations between suboptimal diet and maternal and child health outcomes are especially important in Sub‐ Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia, where current diets contribute to widespread stunting, wasting, and intrauterine growth restriction as well as micronutrient deficiencies in women and children (Black et al, 2008). The United Nations (UN) declared 2016 the start of a “Decade of Action on Nutrition” (the Decade) to accelerate progress in achieving global nutrition targets. The Decade calls for global, national, and regional stakeholders to take action on nutrition commitments outlined by the ICN2 and SDGs (Food and Agriculture Organization & World Health Organization, 2016)
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