Data and Evidence to Address India’s Nutrition Challenge:

POSHAN’s State Policy Notes and District Nutrition Profiles

Purnima Menon, PhDSenior Research Fellow & Theme Leader for South Asia Nutrition Programs

Program Director, POSHANPoverty, Health and Nutrition Division & South Asia Office, IFPRI

POSHAN is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

2017: An unprecedented time for accelerating nutrition actions in India

Bringing it together

National Nutrition Strategy, with targets

National Nutrition Mission, with budget

Existing landscape of programs

State-level nutrition commitment & interest

New data on nutrition

Improved nutrition in 2022 (and looking

towards 2030)

How to turn commitment

to impact?

POSHAN: a knowledge initiative focused on data & evidence for nutrition

Problem

• Situation of undernutrition and determinants at national and state level

• District-level undernutrition and determinants

Solutions

• Policies

• Programs

• Interventions

The many uses of data

• Harmonizing our understanding of nutrition, its determinants and coverage of programs

• Diagnostic assessments to support priority actions– Geographic and programmatic

• Benchmarking for district, state and national reviews

• Research• And more!

The POSHAN team’s work with the NFHS-4 summary data

State fact sheets

District fact sheets

~70,000 data points

Topic-specific analyses: coverage, stunting drivers, etc.

Trends report

Policy Notes

District Nutrition Profiles

29

640

1Early to mid-2017

Data Notes

2

POSHAN’s Policy Notes on State Nutrition Outcomes, Determinants and Interventions

• Overview of nutrition at the state-level

• Highlights nutrition challenges, progress on determinants and coverage

• Highlights district-variability within state

• Many uses!

POSHAN’s District Nutrition Profiles: 640 districts

• Nutrition outcomes, immediate and underlying determinants and coverage

• Can be used in many ways and by many actors! – A diagnostic tool to understand

the determinants of nutritional outcomes at a local level

– To pinpoint areas for strategic actions/interventions

– To identify areas for deep-dive analysis/research

– To cover nutrition in the local media

– For advocacy– And more…

POSHAN Knowledge Products

29 640

RESEARCH AND POLICY PRIORITIES

Priority topics for work with unit-level NFHS-4 data

• Update trend analyses, coverage gap maps and other analytics where indicator definitions need further harmonization across survey rounds.

• In-depth topical analyses focused on:– Decomposition analyses to understand the drivers of change in

several WHA target indicators including stunting, wasting, anemia, and exclusive breastfeeding. • India (overall), and for specific states.

– Determinants of nutrition outcomes (esp. wasting and stunting) and the role of immediate and underlying determinants

– Nutrition coverage-focused analysis focused on inequity, factors associated with current coverage and changes in coverage

– Other topics!

Use of data and knowledge products

• Harmonizing our understanding of nutrition– Critical because the people who

need to act are so many!

• Diagnostic assessments to support priority actions– Geographic and programmatic

• Benchmarking for local reviews• “Baseline” for the National

Nutrition Strategy/Mission and for state nutrition missions

• And more!