Oct 18 2011
In this post in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog," Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies, writes, "We must politicize undernutrition, which is still a major global problem, so that it gets the attention it deserves." He adds, "Three key elements of governance are critical to tackling undernutrition: capacity, accountability and responsiveness."
Haddad highlights two success stories on the politicization of nutrition from Brazil and Peru recently featured at a Care and Action Against Hunger event and writes, "First, we need real-time mapping of nutrition outcomes to give the media hooks to hang nutrition stories on and to give governments better information to hang policies on"; "Second, we need to track commitments to reduce undernutrition in spending, through policies and legislation, and on rights"; and, "Third, we need to experiment with community score cards to overcome the silence around poor service delivery" (10/17).
This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente. |