POSHAN RELEASES NEW SERIES ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF INNOVATIONS TO IMPROVE NUTRITION IN INDIA

Today, POSHAN launched a new series of publications called Implementation Notes. These papers summarize experiences related to how specific interventions or programs are delivered. They are intended to share information on innovations in delivery and are not research products.

POSHAN launched these at the Together for Nutrition 2014: Working Across Sectors to Improve Nutrition in India conference, co-hosted by POSHAN and Transform Nutrition, which serves as platform for learning and facilitating discussion around the challenging task of bringing diverse sectors together to improve maternal and child nutrition in India. The conference is taking place October 29-30 in Delhi.

The following Implementation Notes were all released today:

Implementation Note 1: Writing About Nutrition in Indian Newspapers: Lessons Learned from the OneWorld POSHAN Media Fellowship

To try to raise the profile of nutrition in the Indian media, POSHAN and the OneWorld Foundation, India (OWFI) co-implemented the six-month OneWorld-POSHAN Fellowship on Maternal and Child Undernutrition. The fellowship was designed to highlight the massive prevalence of undernutrition among women and children in India through the mainstream newspaper media. It was envisioned that increased news stories about nutrition would enable readers to not only gain more awareness about malnutrition but also take informed collective action.This Implementation Note focuses on the roll out and lessons learned of this program. It aims to contribute to wider knowledge about implementing media fellowship programs. To that end, the paper is intended for those who wish to engage with the media and communicate their health research to wider audiences and to media institutes seeking to build the capacity of journalists to report on health issues in developing countries.

Implementation Note 2: The Bhavishya Alliance: A Multisectoral Initiative to Address Undernutrition in Maharashtra

In 2006, a strategic, multistakeholder alliance among Hindustan Unilever, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Synergos Institute was conceived and formalized as the Bhavishya Alliance to address malnutrition in Maharashtra.This Implementation Note summarizes how the Bhavishya Alliance served as a way for those in corporate, government, and civil society sectors planned and implemented a series of innovative pilot projects and what lessons learned resulted from this collaboration.

Implementation Note 3: Pustikar Diwas: Convergent Action to Reduce Child Undernutrition in Odisha 

In 2009, the Department of Health & Family Welfare and the Integrated Child Development Services began Pustikar Diwas, which is a fixed-service delivery day on which medical personnel at primary health centers and community health centers attend the nutritional needs of severely underweight children and those suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Pustikar Diwas enables skilled providers to manage and treat any underlying infections of children in the outpatient; refer children with SAM to nutritional rehabilitation centers for appropriate care; and promote knowledge on feeding and appropriate care, thus reducing the prevalence of undernutrition in Odisha. This Implementation Note summarizes how Pustikar Diwas was rolled out and how it has evolved over time to meet the needs of its beneficiaries.

Implementation Note 4: Leveraging the Power of Women’s Groups and Financial Services to Improve Knowledge and Behaviors for Improved Child and Maternal Nutrition

Microfinance institutions (MFIs), self-help promoting institutions (SHPIs), and their self-help groups (SHGs) reach about 90 million poor women in India, bringing them together regularly to participate in financial activities that support their livelihoods. Since 2007, Freedom from Hunger and the Microcredit Summit Campaign, in partnership through the Health and Microfinance Alliance (HMA), have worked with 38 MFIs and SHPIs across nine states in India that collectively reach more than 7.3 million women with financial services. This Implementation Note summarizes the experience of HMA in integrating health and nutritional services into the activities of such groups, including health financing, health and nutrition education, and relationship-building with local health and nutritional services.

Implementation Note 5: The Health Sub-Centre as an Effective Platform for Coordinated Capacity Building and Supportive Supervision of Frontline Workers

Given the range of frontline staff and their complementary aims, the health subcenter represents an optimal geographical and demographic unit for health and nutrition programs to target specific outcomes through nutrition-specific interventions. It is a natural platform for convergence among staff of both the Department of Health and the Department of Social Welfare. Since 2011, CARE India, through its Integrated Family Health Initiative (IFHI), has been facilitating such convergence in Bihar. This Implementation Note summarizes the experience of CARE’s efforts to maximize both the effectiveness of frontline workers in promoting specific health and nutrition practices, and the coverage of essential preventive services at the family level. Specifically, it summarizes the experience of instituting monthly meetings among frontline workers at subcenters in Bihar.

Implementation Note 6: A Multisectoral Initiative to Address Nutrition among Children in Remote, Conflict-Affected Zones of Odisha

One of the challenges to address stunting in Odisha is the lack of trained frontline workers to assess and refer affected children to appropriate health services for care and treatment. To create a substantial dent in this problem, a multisectoral partnership was initiated in September 2012 among the Department of Women and Child Development, the Department of Health and Family Welfare, the National Health Mission, the Government of Odisha, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the Public Health Foundation of India to build the capacity of supervisors and child development project officers from the Integrated Child Development Services  in Odisha to understand and manage the issue of stunting in children. This Implementation Note summarizes the collaborative process among these actors to develop the curriculum and train the officers in Odisha.

Implementation Note 7: Toward Improved Nutrition: The Atal Bal Arogya Evam Poshan Mission

Half of the children in Madhya Pradesh under age 5 are stunted and 35 percent are wasted. In an effort to address this situation, in late 2010, the Government of Madhya Pradesh launched the Atal Bal Aarogya Evam Poshan Mission (referred to as Atal Bal Mission) to bring about a systematic reduction in child malnutrition. The mission’s strategic objectives include integrated planning by multiple government departments from various sectors, including women and child development, public health, rural development, tribal welfare, food and civil supplies, engineering, school education, and finance. This Implementation Note summarizes the way in which the different stakeholders and sectors collaborate to achieve the mission’s objectives.

Implementation Note 8: Collaboration of Integrated Child Development Services with Self-Help Groups to Establish a Decentralized Supply Model for Supplementary Feeding at Anganwadi Centres

The Integrated Child Development Services program provides supplementary food to millions of women and young children in India for approximately 300 days a year at its anganwadi centers (AWCs). This Implementation Note summarizes the experience and lessons learned in involving women’s self-help groups in procuring, processing, and supplying commodities and processed foods for supplementary feeding at select AWCs in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Implementation Note 9: Panchayat-Led Nutrition and Daycare Centres: The Fulwari Scheme of Chhattisgarh 

Chhattisgarh has a statewide program using community health workers called mitanins. The National Rural Health Mission organizes the payment of small stipends to the mitanins through the panchayats and recognizes them as accredited social health activists. The mitanins enjoy a high level of credibility with local communities through their leadership of Village Health, Sanitation and Nutrition Committees, which play an active role in monitoring the status, services, and behaviors related to the village’s nutrition and health. In 2012, to address the issue of undernutrition and harness the strengths of the actors working in the area, the State Health Resource Centre, Chhattisgarh, a nongovernmental organization providing long-term technical capacity to the Department of Health and Family Welfare, began working with the panchayats of Surguja to create community-managed feeding and daycare centers called Fulwari.  This Implementation Note summarizes the experience of working with panchayats to form and lead the Fulwari and the benefits these have provided to date.