Regions:
Asia, Global, Sub-Saharan Africa

Related Key Topics:
Capacity Building, Food Security, Health and Nutrition

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Nutrition-Africa and Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Nutrition-Asia  (Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lab-Africa and Feed the Future Innovation Lab-Asia) aim to discover the most effective approaches to improving child nutrition outcomes at scale. The research and capacity-building activities are framed by three overarching goals: 1. to understand ‘the how,’ not just ‘the what’, in achieving successes at scale; 2. to close knowledge gaps in nutrition, identified through a definition of country priorities and global assessments of the nutritional landscape; and 3. to identify essential packages of actions that link nutrition, health, and agriculture around key problems in food, water, and disease. The Nutrition Innovation Lab-Africa  and Nutrition Innovation Lab-Asia activities focus specifically on identifying best practices emerging from USAID/Uganda’s Community Connectors Project and on USAID/Nepal’s Integrated Nutrition Program.

The Nutrition Innovation Lab-Africa and Nutrition Innovation Lab-Asia enhance human and institutional capacity building at all levels from host-country institutions, research institutions, and policy makers to local government, agricultural extension agents, and community health volunteers. Joint training among these groups will be necessary to achieve sustainable and positive behavior change. Success will be measured through gains in nutritional outcomes, agricultural productivity and household incomes, as well as through changes in water systems, disease incidence and enhanced service-seeking.

The Nutrition Innovation Lab-Africa and Nutrition Innovation Lab-Asia work closely with the US Government, development partners and host country institutions in support of the Feed the Future initiative. Collaboration will focus on determining what kind of investments in agriculture, health and nutrition, institutional and human capacity development, and policies can be used to achieve large scale improvements in nutrition outcomes.

The Management Entity of the Nutrition Innovation Lab-Africa and Nutrition Innovation Lab-Asia is at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. They are partnering with the Schools of Public Health of Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University, the College of Agriculture at Purdue University, the College of Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Sciences at Tuskegee University, and Development Alternatives, Inc.