COVID-19 Nutrition Resources | USAID Advancing Nutrition

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Here you can access a collection of resources related to multi-sectoral nutrition programming and COVID-19. This list will be updated as new resources become available.

If you have additional resources you think would be useful for the community, please send them to us at info@advancingnutrition.org.

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We found 191 resource(s)

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Mom Knows Best: Equipping Mothers in the Kyrgyz Republic with Nutrition Know-How

USAID, July 2022

Knowledge Management

Counseling for parents focuses on optimal nutrition for families through breastfeeding and infant and young child feeding practices. Training sessions cover proper breastfeeding posture, frequency of breastfeeding, and good maternal diet to support infant health.

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India SBC Rapid Assessment

USAID Advancing Nutrition, September 2022

Social and Behavior Change and Gender

USAID Advancing Nutrition conducted social and behavior change (SBC) formative research in the three intervention districts of Tinsukia, Goalpara, and Barpeta in Assam to inform the project’s SBC activities. The objective of the study was to understand the factors affecting the target population, including women and adolescent girls, from adopting key nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) and diet-related behaviors, as well as to receive input on preferred activities for addressing the identified factors. The research encouraged participants to reflect on historically successful methods for inspiring nutrition-related behavior change. Additionally, the research was intended to result in the prioritized behaviors for USAID Advancing Nutrition.

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Strengthening Nutrition Interventions in Antenatal Care Services Improved Consumption of Iron-Folic Acid Supplements and Early Breastfeeding Practices in Burkina Faso

Kim, Sunny, Rasmané Ganaba, Purnima Menon, et al. Current Developments in Nutrition, June 2022

Social and Behavior Change and Gender

Strengthening maternal nutrition interventions delivered through government antenatal care services is effective for improving maternal nutrition practices. Continued efforts to strengthen services may be needed for greater behavior change and to address family support, social norms, and other factors that impact maternal diet.

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Standing Together for Nutrition Knowledge Hub

Standing Together for Nutrition, January 2022

Knowledge Management

The hub captures emerging evidence on the impact of crises on health, food, economic, social, and education systems; the disproportionate impact on women and girls’ nutrition; and effective measures to mitigate the burden.

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Status of Digital Agriculture in 47 Sub-Saharan African Countries

Food and Agriculture Organization, International Telecommunication Union, 2022

Food Systems

Agriculture digitalization is important to leverage the benefits of digital technologies to transform societies, improve livelihoods, and eradicate poverty. The report identifies countries’ current status by assessing infrastructure, digital penetration, policies and regulations, the business environment, human capital, and agro-innovation.

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Child Alert: Severe Wasting

UNICEF, May 2022

Nutrition in Humanitarian Contexts

Donors should fully fund the scale-up of early prevention and treatment, provide multi-year funding, and ensure that budgets include ready-to-use therapeutic food allocations. Governments should integrate early prevention and treatment programs into national primary health and nutrition care systems and services—and protect child nutrition investments from budget cuts. The report is available in Arabic, English, French and Spanish. Two webinars accompany the report.

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Mitigating Impacts of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine on Global Food Security & Nutrition

Feed the Future, June 2022

Knowledge Management

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is contributing to rising food, fuel, and fertilizer prices around the world, which are particularly impactful for communities already experiencing increased poverty, hunger, and malnutrition due to COVID-19, climate change, and protracted conflict.

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COVID-19 and Nutrition Analytical Framework

USAID Advancing Nutrition, UNICEF, USAID, WHO, July 2022

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Building Global Consensus

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.

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Qualitative Study on Skills and Capacity Barriers in Turkana County, Kenya: Study Report

USAID Advancing Nutrition, June 2022

Nutrition and Health Systems

Integrated community case management (iCCM) brings identification, treatment, and referral of common childhood illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and malnutrition, as well as newborn care to the community. In Kenya, community health volunteers (CHVs) implement iCCM under the guidance of community health extension workers. While iCCM has a significant focus on disease treatment, it is unclear what level of counseling CHVs provide to facilitate prevention of common childhood illnesses. USAID Advancing Nutrition conducted this formative research to understand the counseling CHVs provide related to the prevention of pneumonia and malnutrition.

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Building SBC Capacity Focus of Innovative Blended Learning Program in West and Central Africa

Alive & Thrive, February 2022

Capacity Strengthening

The blended learning program, which aims to build capacity to integrate social and behavior change (SBC) into nutrition programs, includes an online course as well as coaching support and live lectures to increase accountability. Despite occasional connectivity issues and a heavy reading load, participants reported learning practical skills, including developing costed SBC action plans.

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COVID-19 & Global Food Security: 2 Years Later

International Food Policy Research Institute, March 2022

Knowledge Management

The report examines the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on poverty, food security, nutrition, and health globally. It presents key lessons on food security and food system resilience and assesses policy responses to the crisis. Authors consider how the pandemic experience can inform recovery and longer-term efforts to build more resilient food systems.

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Kenya Nutrition Advocacy, Communication, and Social Mobilization Strategy, 2022-2027

, May 2022

The Ministry of Health in collaboration with other Ministries, Departments Agencies, development partners and other key stakeholders have developed the Kenya Nutrition Advocacy, Communication, and Social Mobilisation (ACSM) Strategy (2022–2027). The overall goal of the ACSM strategy is to contribute towards the attainment of a malnutrition free Kenya through accelerated advocacy, communication, and social mobilisation for Nutrition Advocacy, Communication, and Social Mobilisation (ACSM) Strategy 2022-2027 strengthened governance, functional nutrition systems, empowered communities, and well financed nutrition institutions.

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Global Challenges Mean That Advancing Nutrition is More Important than Ever

USAID Advancing Nutrition, February 2022

Knowledge Management

The global nutrition community saw the COVID-19 pandemic as a rallying call and galvanized support to prevent backsliding and improve nutrition around the world. In its third year of implementation, USAID Advancing Nutrition, worked at the global level and in 12 countries to strengthen nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive policies, programs, interventions, and systems to support and inform USAID’s strategic priorities.

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Reshaping Food Policy and Governance to Incentivize and Empower Disadvantaged Groups for Improving Nutrition

Wang, Jingjing, Xinyue Ding, Haixiu Gao, et al. Nutrients, February 2022

Food Systems

To end malnutrition in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era, multiple sectors—including health, agriculture, social protection, education, and infrastructure—must collaborate more effectively to develop and implement food and nutrition policies.

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Localization: A “Landscape” Report

Feinstein International Center, December 2021

Humanitarian assistance structures often exclude or marginalize local actors. Adopting a localization approach requires recognizing that policy changes can have unintended consequences, ensuring funding is more accessible to local humanitarian actors, investing in creating an enabling environment, building relationships with diverse local actors, and ensuring greater collective action among donors.

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Health and Nutrition Research and Evidence Digest

Save the Children, December 2021

Nutrition and Health Systems

This edition presents evaluations from various projects, including a nutrition project in Ethiopia, a maternal and child health project in Sri Lanka, and a family planning project in Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. It also features a study focusing on COVID-19 prevention intervention protocols for social behavior change in Somalia; a knowledge, attitudes, and practices survey for a COVID-19 project in Pakistan; research on appropriate infant and young child feeding practices for non-breastfed infants in emergency settings; and an article about integrating water, sanitation, and hygiene into a displacement crisis response.

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Global and Local Partnerships Advance Nutrition

USAID Advancing Nutrition, January 2022

Knowledge Management

Collaborative multi-sectoral nutrition initiatives include establishing food security and nutrition planning guidelines; conducting training of trainers courses delivering nutrition-specific activities to adolescent girls, pregnant women, and women of reproductive age; and supporting governments to develop strategies and tools for nutrition services. USAID Advancing Nutrition will expand to support nutrition initiatives in four new countries this year.

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USAID Large-Scale Food Fortification Programming Guide: Supporting Food Fortification at a Country Level and on a Global Scale

Agrilinks, February 2022

Food Systems

The guide helps USAID Bureaus, Missions, and development partners assess specific needs and strategic opportunities to design, implement, monitor and evaluate, and adjust programming to local contexts. It supports progress toward USAID’s vision for sustainable, large-scale food fortification that improves access to adequate and affordable diets.

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Do Not Transform Food Systems on the Backs of the Rural Poor

Davis, Benjamin, Leslie Lipper, Paul Winters. Food Security, January 2022

Food Systems

Many food system transformation approaches do not explicitly include measures to ensure that envisioned changes will improve the livelihoods of low-income people living in rural areas. Such modeling risks transforming food systems to reach environmental and nutritional objectives without considering unintended consequences for this population.

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Nutrition Financing Q&A with Senior Nutrition Advisor Rebecca Egan

Agrilinks, January 2022

Knowledge Management

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) deliver about 75 percent of all food consumed in sub-Saharan Africa but generally struggle to access financing. The Nutritious Foods Financing Facility will bolster SMEs and demonstrate how direct loans to SMEs can contribute to positive nutrition outcomes by increasing supply and consumption of safe and nutritious foods.

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Empowering for Success: Lessons in Supporting Women-Led Agribusinesses

Fintrac Inc., February 2022

Food Systems

Speakers discuss how the Accelerating Women’s Entrepreneurship award in 2018 and the Growing Women’s Entrepreneurship award in 2019 and 2020 support entrepreneurs and their businesses—and how recipients continue to leverage tools and resources developed as part of their awards. This is a webinar.

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Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition

FAO, African Union, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, November 2021

Knowledge Management

Increasing numbers of Africans experience hunger and suffer widespread micronutrient deficiencies; overweight and obesity are significant public health concerns as well. A common vision, strong political leadership, and effective cross-sectoral collaboration, are essential to identify and implement sustainable solutions that transform agrifood systems to deliver healthy, affordable diets. This report is available in English and French.

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Seen, Counted, Included: Using Data to Shed Light on the Well-Being of Children with Disabilities

UNICEF, November 2021

Early Childhood Development

When absent from official statistics, children and adults with disabilities remain politically and socially invisible, which increases marginalization and potential rights violations. This report discusses nutrition and health, access to water and sanitation, protection from violence and exploitation, and education indicators and includes the first-ever global and regional estimates of children with disabilities.

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Best Practices for Conducting a Remote Data Quality Assessment

Infectious Disease Society of America, November 2021

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning

Using a remote data quality assessment approach facilitates routine monitoring in emergency settings or when travel is not possible. Remote approaches also protect the health and safety of service providers, government staff, data collectors, and supervisors.

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