POSHAN NEW POLICY NOTE EXPLORES LESSONS LEARNED IN WORKING MULTISECTORALLY TO IMPROVE NUTRITION GLOBALLY AND INDIA

Photo Credit Aishwarya Pillai

It is recognized that eliminating undernutrition requires actions across multiple sectors.  A child must receive food with adequate energy, protein, and micronutrients while at the same time having access to safe water, good sanitation, and quality health care.  However, services that need to be delivered are typically not led by the same sector, agency, or actor.  The agricultural sector, for example, focuses mostly on food production. The health sector usually focuses on clinical care, rather than on care and feeding in the home.

Though it is recognized that working multisectorally is critical to ensuring that adequate food, health, and care reach children, it isn’t always clear how to do so and it is rarely easy. With an aim of garnering lessons learned that could inform India’s policymakers and program implementers, POSHAN commissioned a review of global and Indian experience in improving nutrition through multiple sectors. The new Policy Note Working Multisectorally to Improve Nutrition: Global Lessons and Current Status (Please see below the paper)  in India examines best practices from other countries, including Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Senegal, and Thailand, as well as the status of current multisectoral initiatives in India in nutrition, which include the Multisectoral Nutrition Programme to Address Maternal and Child Undernutrition, which was conceived in 2008 by the Prime Minister’s National Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges and launched in 2014. The paper features recommendations to ensure better implementation and sustainability of multisectoral approaches in India.

Last year in May 2013, POSHAN had organized a consultation on multisectoral approaches to improve maternal and child nutrition in India and had brought together key policymakers and policy advisers from a variety of ministries at the national level and from the Indian states of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. This event highlighted lessons and experiences from other countries and from India.

Download the POSHAN Policy Note Working Multisectorally to Improve Nutrition Globally and India.pdf (661 Kb)