Since 2020, USAID Advancing Nutrition has facilitated the Agile Core Team for Nutrition Monitoring, composed of UNICEF, USAID, WHO and USAID Advancing Nutrition. The ACT-NM Group has developed a comprehensive nutrition and COVID-19 pandemic analytical framework focused on the pathways connecting the secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on nutrition outcomes in both children and adults. This framework is well poised to:

• Allow policymakers and implementers to better identify and assess potential pathways tracking the intersection between the secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and nutrition.
• Provide a useful tool for planning policies, programs, and interventions.
• Help identify data gaps.
• Serve as a structure to model efforts across multiple pathways.
• Support an integrated, systems approach to nutrition challenges caused, increased, or intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics/crises.

Linking the overarching categories of food, health, social protection, education, water, and sanitation to outcomes and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on nutrition, the Analytical Framework Visualizer’s applicability to predict the impact of future disasters is unmatched. For policymakers and program staff, this tool is a powerful and adaptable means to fortify nutrition programs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and for shocks in the future. A technical note (also available in the Downloads tab) provides additional background on the framework and more detail on the example pathways.