Last month, the Center for Global Development released a paper entitled “Global Nutrition Institutions: Is there an Appetite for Change.” The paper was written by Danielle Kuczynski and Ruth Levin, an internationally recognized expert on global health and health policy.

Levin and Kuczynski’s paper identifies what they believe to be the major institutional weaknesses in global nutrition and offers their recommendations for addressing the problems. Many of the issues they identify lie within the present structure of the global nutrition community. They define the structure as an “ecosystem” – “a loose collection of entities that are focused largely on their survival without an overriding logic or plan behind the division of responsibilities among them.” As such, global nutrition institutions often compete, overlap, or leave gaps.

The ecosystem, the institutions themselves, the leadership, and the general nature of the problem of undernutrition itself, gives rise to the weaknesses proffered in the paper:
-     Lack of an institutional leader within the international community which “galvanizes the nutrition community behind a coherent set of messages about the importance, urgency and feasibility of addressing nutrition related problems.”

-    Inability to successfully link nutrition to more macro-level concerns such as trade, agriculture, and development. Nutrition often competes for attention with more “important” or “bigger” issues. 

-    Competition and fragmentation between technical communities.

-    Lack of engagement with the private sector.

-    Disconnect between international players and country policy making and implementation systems.

Levine and Kuczynski offer a few recommendations to improve the success and effectiveness of global nutrition endeavors. One is to draw a connection to nutrition related crises, such as the food price shocks of recent years. Doing so may help draw attention to the matter of the quality of the food, not just the quantity of it. Other suggestions include renewing the UN system, and harnessing the resources of the private sector.

The paper does not only recognize the weakness of global nutrition systems, the authors also share some of the strengths of global institutions, including the creation of promising new partnerships between institutions and improvement in national planning and engagement. These strengths may actually reveal steps towards the more efficient and cooperative nutritional ecosystem that the authors seek to attain.

Read the paper >>