Welcome to the Global Nutrition Report

The Global Nutrition Report, which will be launched in November 2014, is one outcome of the Nutrition for Growth Summit held in London in 2013. The authors are are a group of stakeholders, chaired by representatives of the Governments of Malawi and the UK, working to convene, connect and strengthen existing processes for reporting on nutrition. In recognition that there is a lot of invaluable information on nutrition available , it is too fragmented and some critical knowledge and information gaps exist. The Global Nutrition Report will be comprehensive, fill the data gaps and, in addition to statistics, it will include the stories behind nutrition issues. The Report will be a valuable tool for nutrition advocacy.

Working with and through a wide range of stakeholders such as governments, the SUN Secretariat, WHO, UNICEF, FAO, WFP, the Coverage Monitoring Network, the SUN Civil Society Network, the SUN Business Network, the SUN Donor Network, the World Bank and national and international research centres, we seek to support an increased coherence to reporting on nutrition progress (or lack thereof). We also want to position nutrition at the heart of the promised post-2015 ‘data revolution’. In particular, there are huge data gaps in the monitoring of programme coverage, resource flows, institutional and individual capacity and policies to support nutrition. These need to be filled. All of this is designed to add greater urgency to efforts to reduce malnutrition.

Some early reflections from the Independent Expert Group Co-Chairs:

• Given the tight deadline, the 2014 Report will have to be pragmatic in its ambitions, but it will signal more ambitious data collection in 2015 and 2016
• The data are indeed spread among many different actors—we are talking to a wide range of people, all of whom are being incredibly generous with their time and energy
• The data cover nutrition status outcomes, programme coverage, underlying determinants such as food security and WASH, resource allocations and institutional and policy transformations. Despite the best efforts of the people behind each data source, the breadth and quality of the data is highly variable with the collection of data on programme coverage, resource institutional policy transformation still being in its infancy.
• The planned country launches are not just to broadcast the Report’s findings, but also to support nutrition champions to use the Report in the ways that they find most useful to further their aims and priorities
• The Report is global in its reach and will seek to include data on adult obesity as well as overweight children under the age of five. Some progress will be made in unifying these two communities, but we hope many more connections will happen in 2015 and 2016
• The Independent Expert Group (IEG) were nominated via an open call. The Stakeholder Group appointed us as co-chairs and, after seeking input from the Stakeholder Group, together we selected the IEG from the nominees
• The IEG tries to offer a balance of perspectives across regions, over- and undernutrition, research and programme, government and CSO, UN and academia. We think it does this well. The one gap is private sector representation and the IEG will need to give more thought to this issue for 2015 and beyond. Common to all IEG members, regardless of perspectives, is a commitment to rigour and integrity. We need to speak truth to power without unnecessarily alienating it.

The coming month will see a lot of the data come in, with a frenzy of graph and table making from us. We have also invited a number of individuals to submit commentaries to be featured on this site and in the Report (after appropriate peer review). Much of the final writing will happen in August, with advance pieces being written in July.

It will be an intense period for the IEG and the Secretariat and we will post updates on our progress on this website. We welcome any comments you wish to make regarding the Report and the data.