Strengthened mechanism for improved nutrition governance and accountability

Some of the activities towards this intervention are to 1) engage Nepalese political leaders and elected representatives in nutrition platforms; 2) ensure functioning of nutrition platforms for effective implementation of nutrition-related acts, policies, strategies and plans; 3) promote and engage nutrition champions from the government, academia, civil society, the private sector and youth organisations to advocate for a nutrition agenda; and 4) ensure adequate annual resource allocation to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) nutrition targets.

To quantify the ‘quality of governance’ in relation to national plans of action to accelerate improvements in nutrition, an innovative metric, the Nutrition Governance Index (NGI), will be developed. The NGI will be used to assess self-reported practices of, and perceptions held by, administration officials tasked with implementing government policy at the national and subnational levels. Six domains (ie, Understanding Nutrition and related responsibilities, Collaboration, Financial Resources, Nutrition Leadership, Capacity and Support) will be measured. NGI scores will be calculated through surveys across multiple years, and the yearly median NGI score will be compared to see the improvement in nutrition governance. Based on these scores, the NGI will be ranked into five equal parts, from lowest to highest scores.

Moreover, the NGI is an innovative metric, and we have yet to finalise the methodologies and adapt them to the Nepalese context. During upcoming years – with technical support from the development partners and, in particular, US Agency for International Development – we will be developing this tool. Accordingly, we will revise the target and express it in an appropriate unit of measurement down the line, once the tool is finalised.