Driving change in nutrition: from policy to impact

Abstract

After a period of relative success in generating political momentum to address malnutrition, there is an increasing urgency to focus on implementation and impact on the ground. In addition to evidence of what works, where and when, this requires better documentation of the experiences of policymakers, program managers and implementers in making decisions on what to do in real time. This presentation will highlight lessons learned in the Stories of Change (SoC) initiative, led by Transform Nutrition, on how enabling environments have been cultivated and sustained, and on what drives change, in different countries. SoC was largely focused on undernutrition, but there is a growing need now to adopt a wide-angled lens to identify and confront barriers to improvements across the nutrition spectrum. Can lessons from success in addressing undernutrition be applied to the challenge posed by the obesity epidemic?