Enhancing governance and strengthening advocacy for policy change of large Collective Impact initiatives.

Nutrition issues are increasingly being addressed through global partnerships and multi-sectoral initiatives. Ensuring effective governance of these initiatives is instrumental for achieving large-scale impact. The Collective Impact (CI) approach is an insightful framework that can be used to guide and assess the effectiveness of this governance.

Media audit reveals inappropriate promotion of products under the scope of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes in South-East Asia.

Objective: To review regulations and to perform a media audit of promotion of products under the scope of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes ('the Code') in South-East Asia.

Design: We reviewed national regulations relating to the Code and 800 clips of editorial content, 387 advertisements and 217 Facebook posts from January 2015 to January 2016. We explored the ecological association between regulations and market size, and between the number of advertisements and market size and growth of milk formula.

The cost of not breastfeeding in Southeast Asia.

Rates of exclusive breastfeeding are slowly increasing, but remain suboptimal globally despite the health and economic benefits. This study estimates the costs of not breastfeeding across seven countries in Southeast Asia and presents a cost-benefit analysis of a modeled comprehensive breastfeeding strategy in Viet Nam, based on a large programme. There have been very few such studies previously for low- and middle-income countries.

Change strategies to protect, promote, and support infant and young child feeding.

Background: Despite the existence of a strong evidence base for investing in infant and young child feeding (IYCF), sufficiently supported IYCF policies and programs are rare.

Objective: To develop evidence-based advocacy strategies in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Vietnam to enable policy change and to increase investments in and ensure scale-up and sustainability of IYCF programs.

Methods: Situational analysis, formative and opinion leader research, and stakeholder consultations were used to develop three contextualized advocacy strategies.