Features of an enabling environment

Seminar: The Politics of Reducing Malnutrition

March 6, 2014 -

On Wednesday 22nd January Transform Nutrition held a seminar at the Institute of Development Studies. Stuart Gillespie (IFPRI ) and Nick Nisbett (IDS) talked about how in recent years, political discourse on the challenge of undernutrition has increased markedly, leading to stated commitments on the part of many national governments, international organizations and donors. But they suggested that our understanding of what constitutes an “enabling environment for nutrition” is not well developed, and the nutrition research paradigm has routinely neglected the politics of reducing malnutrition. This presentation derived from work conducted for the fourth paper from the Lancet Nutrition Series, released in June 2013.

The politics of reducing malnutrition

March 10, 2013 -

Transforming leadership

Stuart Gillespie discusses his work with IFPRI, IDS and The Micronutrient Initiative to develop paper 4 of the new Lancet nutrition series

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Our research questions

1. What are the features of an enabling environment for nutrition?

2. How can we assess, monitor and strengthen leadership and capacity?

3. How can we assess, monitor and strengthen accountability and responsiveness?

Existing research has highlighted the need to build sustained political commitment and capacity at a global and country level, for direct and indirect interventions to be effective. Such enabling environments are fundamental to transforming thinking and action on undernutrition, and reversing decades of neglect. Transform Nutrition have highlighted and reviewed a neglected area of research within nutrition – the wider policy and political processes which underpin nutrition’s basic determinants and which affect the capacity to act at basic, underlying and immediate levels. Foundational reviews published in the Lancet and World Development have been accompanied by innovative new research reviewing: 1) the role of governance amongst other cross-country predictors of nutrition outcomes;and the role of 2) leadership and 3) capacity in country constraints and success. Further foundational work has contributed to the methodological development of new methods of assessing country-wide or sub-national levels of commitment ; and real time monitoring of nutrition outcomes via mobile phones.