WASHINGTON, D.C. — Results for Development (R4D) has published a new case study exploring the Government of Malawi’s commitment to scaling up nutrition through its early childhood development platform and the enabling factors that led to this decision.
The Government of Malawi has made nutrition and Early Childhood Development (ECD) a priority. In conjunction with the government’s commitment to improve nutrition through multisectoral approaches, there have been efforts to study how nutrition actions can be delivered through existing government ECD platforms, including preschools known as community-based childcare centers (CBCCs). For example, the Nutrition Embedded Evaluation Program Impact Evaluation (NEEP-IE), discussed in this case study, studied the impact of adding a set of integrated nutrition and agriculture interventions to Malawi’s ECD program delivered through CBCCs. Positive findings from the NEEP-IE helped inform the Government of Malawi’s commitment to scale up nutrition actions delivered through their ECD platform.
This case study, How Evidence Informs Decision-Making: The scale-up of nutrition actions through an early childhood development platform in Malawi, explores four enabling factors that led to the government’s decision, including:
- Strong base of evidence on impacts and economic rationale.
- Government leadership and multisectoral collaboration at all stages.
- Strong partnerships between government and implementing organizations.
- Community engagement as a driving force.
“This case study underscores the importance of generating policy-relevant evidence to support decision-making, particularly when thinking about how to scale-up nutrition actions through existing multisectoral platforms,” said Mary D’Alimonte, a senior program officer at Results for Development. “Research by IFPRI and implementation experience by Save the Children were critical to help inform the scale-up driven by the government.”
This case study was prepared as part of the Strengthening Economic Evaluation for Multisectoral Strategies for Nutrition (SEEMS-Nutrition) initiative, and benefited from input from colleagues at IFPRI and Save the Children.
SEEMS is a three-year initiative to strengthen evidence of the costs and benefits of multisectoral nutrition strategies. It is led by project director, Carol Levin, from the University of Washington Department of Global Health, with partners including IFPRI, Helen Keller International, and R4D. With new and emerging data coupled with a strong understanding of what information nutrition advocates, funders, policymakers and program planners need, we hope that this work will help generate improved evidence for scaling up multisectoral nutrition programs across countries. Read more here.
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About Results for Development
Results for Development (R4D) is a leading non-profit global development partner. We collaborate with change agents around the world — government officials, civil society leaders and social innovators — to create strong systems that support healthy, educated people. We help our partners move from knowing their goal to knowing how to reach it. We combine global expertise in health, education and nutrition with analytic rigor, practical support for decision-making and implementation and access to peer problem-solving networks. Together with our partners, we build self-sustaining systems that serve everyone and deliver lasting results. Then we share what we learn so others can achieve results for development, too. For more information, visit our website at: www.r4d.org.
