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…
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Overview of new nutrition questions in the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) core questionnaires
The Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Program just released the new DHS model questionnaires for round 8 (2018-2023). We previously shared on the blog how DHS and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) are main sources of nationally-representative maternal, newborn, child health, and nutrition data. The four DHS core questionnaires (household, woman, man, and biomarker) will be used globally, and…
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How can we better support countries to build and maintain nutrition data and information systems?
The first Global Nutrition Report (GNR) in 2014 called for a “data revolution” in nutrition, recognizing that data investments are needed to enable countries to design and implement effective policies and programs, mobilize resources, and monitor progress. While some progress has since been made to improve nutrition data, current efforts are still insufficient. The 2020 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit…
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Overview of WHO’s Essential nutrition actions: mainstreaming nutrition through the life-course
This week at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), UN Member States adopted a landmark declaration on universal health coverage (UHC). Improving integration of nutrition interventions within health services is a key component of UHC and tackling malnutrition across all life stages. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines UHC as all people and populations having access to primary health care…