POSHAN 2014 UPDATE

Dear friends of nutrition in India,

It’s hard to imagine that we’re already in February!  As we launch headlong into our work for the year, on behalf of POSHAN, I would like to thank you for being part of our nutrition journey in 2014! In the spirit of the prevailing ICYMI (“in case you missed it”) mania, we share with you here information on key knowledge products we launched last year.

• Policy Notes:  POSHAN developed the policy note “Working Multisectorally to Improve Nutrition: Global Lessons and Current Status in India” and released it at the same time the Ministry of Women and Child Development introduced the concept of a multisectoral nutrition program in January 2014.
• Implementation Notes:  To support documentation of implementation experiences on “how to”, we released a first set of POSHAN Implementation Notes at the Together for Nutrition 2014 conference.  These papers summarize experiences related to how specific interventions or programs are delivered.  Are you doing something different and innovative to tackle undernutrition?  Do you have ideas for other series?  Send us your ideas!
• Research Notes: Did you miss the findings of our inception research on the state of policies and national programs to deliver nutrition-specific interventions? Or on the state of knowledge networks for nutrition? These are available here.
• POSHAN Reports:  POSHAN reports feature full reports of specific pieces of work.  Don’t miss our report “The Challenge of Child Undernutrition in Uttar Pradesh: Findings from a Situation Assessment”, based on data analysis, policy and program review and stakeholder mapping in Uttar Pradesh.
• Abstract Digests:  Abstract Digests aim to bring to you updates on the published literature of relevance to nutrition issues in India:  Last year we released 3 issues:  Issue 7; Issue 8 ; Issue 9
• District Nutrition Profiles: To support the use of data for decisions, POSHAN developed brief, data-filled district nutrition profiles for 11 districts in the states of Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh. POSHAN’s civil society partners, Vikas Samvad, Public Health Resource Network and Vatsalya, have been using these to engage various stakeholders around the issue of maternal and child undernutrition and to discuss what roles that diverse actors can play for nutrition.

Last, but not least, POSHAN and Transform Nutrition hosted the “Together for Nutrition 2014” conference late last year. This was a first-of-its-kind conference that brought together evidence and programmatic experience on working across sectors to strengthen actions for nutrition. The conference featured competitively selected abstracts as presentations and posters, along with key note lectures and panel discussions featuring national and international leaders in nutrition. All presentations, videos and more are available HERE.

I hope you enjoy catching up with our work and trust that you will continue to support the cause of bringing more evidence to your work on nutrition in 2015!

Warm wishes on behalf of the POSHAN team and all our partners,

Purnima Menon

Director, POSHAN.