A wide range of nutrition stakeholders came together in early December 2021 for the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit. Accountability—including “quality data collection and evidence-based progress measurements and reporting”—was one of the event’s five thematic pillars. Other thematic areas included food, health, resilience, and financing. In the lead up to N4G, DataDENT and partners advocated for all types of…
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More to come: Taking stock of DataDENT’s 2021 achievements and 2022 plans
Happy New Year to much of the world! While there are bigger headlines dominating our news feeds, the start of 2022 signals that we are in the final stretch in DataDENT’s first 5-year funding cycle. DataDENT global and country partners have been hard at work and also celebrating the fruits of multiple years of learning and engagement. This post reviews…
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Signs of progress: 2021 has more data for global targets and more commitment to data
The 2021 Global Nutrition Report (GNR) was released in late November as part of the leadup to this week’s Nutrition for Growth event hosted by the Government of Japan. The report’s headlines were not exactly a cause for celebration. The world remains off-course to meet five of the six World Health Assembly maternal, infant, and young child nutrition (MIYCN) targets…
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How can N4G 2021 commitments strengthen the nutrition data value chain?
On 7-8 December 2021, the Government of Japan will host the second Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit. N4G is a high-profile advocacy event that calls on governments, development partners, and the private sector to make public commitments to actions that will accelerate progress to the World Health Assembly 2025 Nutrition Targets and 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The event is strategically…
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Advancing the quality of care measurement agenda for nutrition
Much of DataDENT’s work has focused in on improving the measurement of nutrition intervention coverage. We have worked to develop new coverage indicators for Maternal, Infant, and Young Child Nutrition (MIYCN) counseling and Nutrition Sensitive Social Protection, advocated for uptake of additional coverage indicators in the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS)-8 core questionnaire and national surveys in Nigeria, India and…
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Measuring the Effectiveness of Nutrition Advocacy
What is advocacy for nutrition policy? Many policy reforms emerge after sustained periods of advocacy. In the field of nutrition, advocates have played a critical role in raising awareness about the causes and consequences of malnutrition and which interventions governments should pursue to improve the health of their populations. Advocacy can be defined as “a continuous and adaptive process of…
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Creating Effective Accountability DVTs: Four Lessons from the Nigeria Governors’ Forum Nutrition Scorecard
The Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) is a non-partisan policy-hub dedicated to promoting good governance and development at the sub-national level. The forum has a strong track record of using data to inform decision-making and improve advocacy among Nigeria’s Governors. For example, the NGF designed and implemented several state-level scorecards to engage Governors around key policy issues including polio eradication, state-supported…
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Advancing the data and accountability agenda for maternal and child undernutrition
On International Women’s Day, 8 March 2021, a Lancet series on Maternal and Child Undernutrition (MCUN) Progress was launched as part of the Nutrition Year of Action—a year-long effort to drive momentum on tackling malnutrition ahead of the 2021 Nutrition for Growth Summit. The goal of the series is to accelerate progress towards reaching the 2025 World Health Assembly nutrition targets and…
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Standing Together for Better Nutrition Data during COVID-19 and Beyond
Since mid-2020, DataDENT team members have been actively involved in Standing Together for Nutrition (STfN)—a multidisciplinary consortium of economics, nutrition, and health systems experts committed to addressing COVID-related nutrition challenges. To date the consortium has released two papers presenting results from modeling exercises that project the impacts of COVID-related interruptions to economic and health systems on maternal and child nutrition…
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2020 DataDENT Highlights
2020 will be remembered as a year the world radically changed, but it was also a year that reminded us of the importance of fundamental structures and systems. Now, as much as ever, strengthening the nutrition data value chain (DVC) is needed to address the challenges COVID-19 crisis poses to food, nutrition, and health globally. During 2020, DataDENT partners—the Johns…