Through a collaboration between the UW’s Department of Global Health, International Food Policy Research Institute, Helen Keller International and Results for Development, several members of the EEWG were awarded a three-year project titled Strengthening Economic Evaluation for Multisectoral Strategies for Nutrition (SEEMS-Nutrition).

Under the project, researchers will work to improve and standardize the information on costs and benefits of scaling up food systems strategies. This will allow them to better compare interventions and policy levers to address healthy food systems, dietary intake and improved nutritional status.

“There has been a call among the nutrition, agriculture and water, sanitation and hygiene communities to improve the evidence on costs and cost effectiveness of multisectoral and food system strategies,” Project director Dr. Carol Levin said. However, transforming agriculture and food systems is a big effort that will require high-quality information for priority setting.

“We are excited that this project will contribute to improved evidence to support the scaling up of future solutions to enhance nutritious food systems in a rapidly evolving environment of decreasing child and maternal mortality and increasing income, urbanization, commercialization and globalization.”

The ANH Academy support to the technical working group was an essential first step towards obtaining this additional funding to improve methods and research for economic evaluations of multisectoral and food systems strategies to being about positive changes in health and nutrition.  The new project will integrate cost data collection and apply economic evaluation methods to multisectoral interventions in Nepal, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh and Kenya.

For more information on the ANH technical working group or on the SEEMS-Nutrition project, please contact Carol Levin.