National nutrition strategies that focus on maternal, infant, and young child nutrition in Southeast Asia do not consistently align with regional and international recommendations.

We examined the consistency of national nutrition strategies and action plans (NNS) focusing on maternal, infant, and young child nutrition in Southeast Asia with regional and international recommendations. Between July and December 2017, we identified and extracted information on context, objectives, interventions, indicators, strategies, and coordination mechanisms from the most recent NNS in nine Southeast Asian countries. All NNS described context, objectives, and the following interventions: antenatal care, micronutrient supplementation during pregnancy, breastfeeding promotion, improved complementary feeding, nutrition in emergencies, and food fortification or dietary diversity.

Social, economic, and political events affect gender equity in China, Nepal, and Nicaragua: a matched, interrupted time-series study.

: Progress in gender equity can improve health at the individual and country levels.: This study's objective was to analyze recent trends in gender equity and identify historical and contextual factors that contributed to changes in gender equity in three countries: China, Nepal, and Nicaragua.: To assess gender equity trends, we used the Gender Gap Index (GGI) from the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report (2006-2017).

Implementation Science in Nutrition: Concepts and Frameworks for an Emerging Field of Science and Practice.

Malnutrition in all its forms has risen on global and national agendas in recent years because of the recognition of its magnitude and its consequences for a wide range of human, social, and economic outcomes. Although the WHO, national governments, and other organizations have endorsed targets and identified appropriate policies, programs, and interventions, a major challenge lies in implementing these with the scale and quality needed to achieve population impact. This paper presents an approach to implementation science in nutrition (ISN) that builds upon concepts developed in other policy domains and addresses critical gaps in linking knowledge to effective action.

Appropriate Use of Linear Growth Measures to Assess Impact of Interventions on Child Development and Catch-Up Growth.

Linear growth is increasingly used as the sole or primary outcome for evaluating interventions, but impact is often not seen. Sometimes there is interest in whether children catch up to where they otherwise would have been had detrimental conditions not occurred, but the literature is confusing because of claims for evidence of catch-up growth based on inappropriate methods. This article examines the use of linear growth measures to evaluate intervention impact and catch-up.

Suaahara in Nepal: An at-scale, multi-sectoral nutrition program influences knowledge and practices while enhancing equity.

The burden of undernutrition in South Asia is greater than anywhere else. Policies and programmatic efforts increasingly address health and non-health determinants of undernutrition. In Nepal, one large-scale integrated nutrition program, Suaahara, aimed to reduce undernutrition among women and children in the 1,000-day period, while simultaneously addressing inequities.

Organizational factors, planning capacity, and integration challenges constrain provincial planning processes for nutrition in decentralizing Vietnam.

Background: Translating national policies and guidelines into effective action at the subnational level (e.g., province or region) is a prerequisite for ensuring an impact on nutrition.

Using an evidence-based approach to design large-scale programs to improve infant and young child feeding.

Background: Global interest in scaling up nutrition outcomes has focused attention on the need for more effective programs to improve infant and young child feeding (IYCF). However there are few examples in the literature of comprehensive programs that have been systematically designed.

Objective: To describe an evidence-based approach for designing large-scale yet tailored IYCF programs in varied country settings.

Willingness to pay for lipid-based nutrient supplements for young children in four urban sites of Ethiopia.

Malnutrition in children under 5 years of age is pervasive in Ethiopia across all wealth quintiles. The objective of this study was to determine the willingness to pay (WTP) for a week's supply of Nutributter® (a lipid-based nutrient supplement, or LNS) through typical urban Ethiopian retail channels. In February, 2012, 128 respondents from 108 households with 6-24-month-old children had the opportunity to sample Nutributter® for 2 days in their homes as a complementary food.

Prospective analysis of the development of the national nutrition agenda in Vietnam from 2006 to 2008.

Improved understanding of how to advance national nutrition policy is critical to ensure greater policy investments in nutrition. We used a participant-observer, change-agent model to prospectively study why and how national nutrition policy advanced in Vietnam between 2006 and 2008. Our goal was to understand strategies used, factors that shaped policy advancement, and the interaction of strategies with factors in this context.

The positive deviance approach: challenges and opportunities for the future.

The positive deviance (PD) approach offers an alternative to needs-based approaches for development. The "traditional" application of the PD approach for childhood malnutrition involves studying children who grow well despite adversity, identifying uncommon, model practices among PD families, and designing an intervention to transfer these behaviors to the mothers of malnourished children. A common intervention for child malnutrition, the so-called "hearth," brings mothers together to practice new feeding and caring behaviors under the encouragement of a village volunteer.

Identification of model newborn care practices through a positive deviance inquiry to guide behavior-change interventions in Haripur, Pakistan.

A positive deviance (PD) inquiry identifies uncommon, model practices that a follow-on program can spread. PD has been used to rehabilitate malnourished children, but not for improving newborn health. Save the Children Federation/US (SC) conducted newborn PD cycles in communities (total population about 5,000 each) in two project areas in Haripur District, Pakistan among Afghan refugees and among local Pakistanis.

Comparison of a positive deviance inquiry with a case-control study to identify factors associated with nutritional status among Afghan refugee children in Pakistan.

We compared the positive deviance (PD) approach in Save the Children's field guide with a case-control study (CCS) to identify behaviors associated with good nutritional status in Afghan refugee children 6 to 24 months of age in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), Pakistan. The positive deviance inquiry (PDI), utilizing observations and interviews with mothers, fathers, and secondary caregivers in eight households, identified 12 feeding, caring, and health-seeking behaviors that were not widely practiced. The CCS, using the same selection criteria and content as the PDI with 50 mother-child pairs not in the PDI, yielded six significant associations with good nutritional status.