Evidence Reviews

Nutrition Surveillance Systems

April 11, 2016 - Leave a Comment

A new and comprehensive review of Nutrition Surveillance Systems is now available. Its commission by Save the Children was stimulated by the growing need for data on nutrition outcomes to track changes over time and assess the progress of nations towards international development goals – such as the World Health Assembly global nutrition targets.

This review, funded by Transform Nutrition, assesses the use and value of nutrition data for a number of other purposes – including early warning of malnutrition, to guide the development of national and regional policies and programmes, and to evaluate their impact on populations.

India Health Report on Nutrition launched

December 10, 2015 - Leave a Comment

The India Health Report on Nutrition 2015 is now available following a launch in Delhi with Honourable Minister Smt Maneka Gandhi and Honourable Minister Shri Jagat Prakash present. This new report from Transform Nutrition offers a critical analysis of the current situation with nutrition at the national and state levels in India. It provides easy-to-understand, state-wise data dashboards for 28 states and Delhi that give a comprehensive view of nutrition and its determinants. It looks at disparities in these outcomes and their multiple determinants across geographical regions, socio-economic classes, and demographic groups and helps identify strategic choices for policy-making at the state level.

Unravelling Commitment? An Empirical Assessment of Political Commitment to Reduce Hunger and Undernutrition in Five High Burden Countries

July 6, 2015 - Leave a Comment

Transforming leadership

A new Evidence Report from IDS is now out Unravelling Commitment? An Empirical Assessment of Political Commitment to Reduce Hunger and Undernutrition in Five High Burden Countries. This study by Dolf te Lintelo and Rajith Lakshman builds on research that has used secondary data to demonstrate that developing countries often have divergent strengths of commitment to hunger reduction and to nutrition.

Scaling up impact on nutrition

January 19, 2015 -

Transforming delivery

A new publication will soon be published ‘Scaling up impact on nutrition: What will it take and how will we get there?’ Written by Stuart Gillespie, Purnima Menon and Andrew L. Kennedy. Read the abstract here.. [Read more…]

Mobile Phone Application for Nutrition Service Delivery in Indonesia

July 8, 2014 -

Transforming leadership

The use of mobile phone technology may offer innovative opportunities to tackle persistently high levels of child undernutrition. This new evidence report, Designing a mixed-method impact evaluation for a mobile phone application for nutrition service delivery in Indonesia, partly funded by Transform Nutrition, sets out to rigorously evaluate the piloting of a mobile phone application for nutrition service delivery, including community-based growth monitoring and nutrition counselling.

This evaluation study is a collaborative project between the Institute of Development Studies and World Vision.

Updated Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI)

July 1, 2014 -

Transforming leadership

Launched this week, the second Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) shows that some countries that have long seen little action in dealing with hunger and undernutrition, are now making significant efforts to tackle these issues. The index, which is partly funded by Transform Nutrition, measures political commitment to tackling hunger and undernutrition in 45 high burden developing countries, and compares these in terms of policies, laws and spending efforts.
IDS news story on HANCI
Blog by Lawrence Haddad
Blog by Melissa Leach, Director of IDS.

Using Mobile Phones for Nutrition Surveillance: A Review of Evidence

November 28, 2013 -

Transforming leadership

Nutrition surveillance is expensive and logistically laborious and therefore often non-existent in resource-low countries. Surveillance systems are also constrained by time-consuming and error-prone paper-based data collection followed by manual data entry. Consequently, monitoring of nutrition outcomes in real time and timely response to nutritional crises is often impossible. This new evidence review Using Mobile Phones for Nutrition Surveillance by Inka Barnett and Jose V Gallegos, funded by Transform Nutrition, outlines how mobile phone technologies could help to address many of these challenges and offer potential benefits.

Women’s Empowerment and Nutrition

November 5, 2013 -

Transforming sectors

What Impact Do Development Programs Have on Women’s Empowerment as a Pathway to Improve Nutrition?

A new discussion paper Women’s Empowerment and Nutrition: An Evidence Review, commissioned by Transform Nutrition is now available in which the authors assess whether women’s empowerment is measured by development interventions that may or may not also aim to improve nutrition.

Read the blog on the IFPRI site by one of the report authors Mara van den Bold.