GAIN — putting nutrition at the heart of #globaldev

In early June, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition held a gathering for its stakeholders in Berlin, Germany. The location was fitting, since Germany had recently signaled its increased commitment to a field where — by the admission of Christiane Hieronymus, of its Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development — it had been slower to engage than other countries.

The event, which immediately preceded GAIN’s board meeting, considered two related themes. The first was how governments could make nutrition a higher political priority in their own countries, and the second was how nutrition could truly become a central element in the post-2015 development agenda.

To achieve these aims, three broad approaches were recommended. The first, in the words of GAIN Executive Director Marc Van Ameringen, was “harnessing the markets”; namely, that robust and sustained private sector involvement was essential. The second could loosely be described as “bridging the data gap”; that is to say, making available more and better data about how much money is being allocated to nutrition in government budgets, as well as thorough evaluation of the work that private companies are doing in this space. The third is what might be termed “looking beyond the health sector,” which means taking nutrition out of its normal silo, and seeing how other government departments can help in promoting its virtues.