NATIONAL NUTRITION MONTH: USING DATA AND EVIDENCE TO EXPAND IMPACT

Participating in the national nutrition month with an event on strengthening actions for nutrition in India (image: IFPRI team)

The nutrition community in India is abuzz with activities to observe National Nutrition Month in September 2018. To mark the country’s fight against malnutrition, a month-long intensive campaign will be jointly undertaken by various government ministries to promote antenatal care, breastfeeding, fight against anemia, importance of nutrition for girls and right age of marriage, growth monitoring and hygiene and sanitation.

To support this initiative with data and evidence, International Food Policy and Research Institute (IFPRI) is co-hosting a knowledge sharing event on “Strengthening Actions for Nutrition in India: Insights from the National Family Health Survey” on September 4, 2018, at the India International Center, New Delhi, India.  Other hosts include Brookings India, Population Council and UNICEF. Researchers from these institutes as well as International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Society for Applied Studies (SAS) and others will come together to share findings from their ongoing/completed analyses on nutrition outcomes, determinants and reach of interventions based on National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data.

India’s policy environment for nutrition is robust and the country has seen some progress in areas such as childhood stunting and anemia among women. However, the data has revealed tremendous inter-district variability and inequity. Researchers have been digging deep into the NFHS-4 data, which was released in February 2018, to understand the drivers of India’s progress on malnutrition, to assess the emergence of new problems such as overweight and non-communicable diseases, and also to assess how policies and programs are reaching the target populations. The objective of this day-long event is to converge the emergent findings on a unified platform and rally stakeholders around these findings to encourage strategic investments and further catalyze the improvements in nutrition outcomes and enhance the effectiveness of interventions.

Registration details of the event can be found here.