Since September 2018, USAID Advancing Nutrition has served as USAID’s flagship multi-sectoral nutrition project , with the goal of making multi-sectoral nutrition a global standard while empowering countries with the necessary evidence, tools, capacity, and commitment to improve nutrition outcomes. On October 4, 2023, project partners and staff from around the world gathered at Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. to learn from five years of project implementation.
The event provided a unique opportunity to reflect on project implementation with a mix of panel presentation and discussion and a lively marketplace of resources produced by the project over the past five years. Opening remarks from JSI, USAID, and project leadership highlighted key project achievements, including:
- Partnering with 751 organizations across 28 low- and middle-income countries
- Training 47,687 individuals in various areas, including anemia prevention and control in Ghana, nutrition-sensitive agriculture in India, nutrition advocacy in Kenya, and health care orientation for responsive care and early learning, among others
- Reaching 149,439 children under five and 120,115 pregnant women with nutrition-specific interventions, and 54,139 children under two with community-level interventions.
Plenary sessions focused on sharing learning and experience around key technical areas to inform future nutrition programming, including perspective from the project’s country leadership. Topics included:
- Supporting Localization for Multi-Sectoral Nutrition
- Nutrition Governance: What is Needed for Success and Sustainability
- Strengthening the Effectiveness of Nutrition, Responsive Care, and Early Learning Counseling
- Strengthening Nutrition in Food Systems: Market to Plate for Healthy Diets
In addition to the plenary sessions, the project also hosted a resource marketplace with tools and publications focused on the following topics:
- Food Systems and Healthy Diets
- Mother and Child-Centered Nutrition Service Delivery
- Facilitating Nutrition Governance
- Localization and Capacity Strengthening
- Nutrition in Fragile Contexts
- Multi-sectoral Nutrition Research
- Accelerating Impact in Health and Food Systems: Nutrition Behavior Change
- Anemia and Micronutrient Measurement
Staff from each of the project’s country programs also shared country-specific resources and learning in the marketplace.
“We're really proud of the partnerships that have happened and blossomed and thrived under this project,” said Margaret Crotty, president and chief executive officer of JSI Research and Training Institute, Inc, the project’s lead implementing partner.
“Locally-led nutrition programming has been at the heart of our technical approach. Facilitating multi-stakeholder engagement to promote coordination and collaboration and building nutrition leadership has been critical to meeting our objectives,” said Heather Danton, USAID Advancing Nutrition project director.
Throughout project implementation, USAID Advancing Nutrition has been committed to fostering positive change in global nutrition programming, generating evidence through new research and secondary analyses, improving nutrition measurement, and fostering collaboration, learning and adaptation. The project has also furthered advances in multi-sectoral nutrition programming by sharing knowledge and experience through a wide range of nutrition resources shared via webinars, social media, workshops, and global conferences,
Visit the end-of-project event page to access event recordings and technical resources from the marketplace.