Context-specific nutrition policies and treatment protocols covering the prevention and treatment of wasting integrated within the health system.

This intervention involves the formation of a global advisory group, co-chaired by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, to consult on the development of global policy briefs and operational guidance to identify needs, provide technical input and advise on how to disseminate the final products. This group will be made up of WHO member state stakeholders, UN agencies (HQ, regional and country representatives), nongovernmental organisations, practitioners and researchers. The group will 1) identify countries and/or regions willing and committed to the co-creation of context-specific nutrition policy and guidance, with WHO and UNICEF developing relevant global operational guidance/tools for policymakers, programmers and healthcare workers and updating existing global guidance pieces; 2) develop and update existing global training materials; and 3) arrange government-led stakeholder meetings in-country with UNICEF and WHO focal points assigned to this commitment to analyse relevant, current national policies and treatment protocols (health and nutrition) and advise on how these meet national needs, as well as fit with new recommendations from the WHO global wasting guidelines.

These materials will have been collated and an initial analysis done by the global advisory group prior to the stakeholder meetings to improve the efficiency of the meetings. The goals of the first stakeholder meeting are to:

1. Establish what is needed in addition to the above and advise on how to make national policies and nutritional treatment protocols context specific and fit for purpose for a particular country (whilst maintaining the highest possible quality-of-care principles).

2. Consider any additional nutrition policy or guidance needed for the particular context and advise on how to achieve this, including sharing of already-developed in-country policies and guidance with other countries).

3. Identify how any context-specific nutrition policy and guidance pieces could be integrated into existing health system services, as well as nutrition programmes.

4. Co-create the actual context-specific nutrition policy and guidance pieces between assigned national focal points and WHO and UNICEF focal points.

5. Coordinate advocacy and communication for dissemination of policies, guidance and training at the country level and pilot operational guidance/tools at the country level (with the global advisory group to again provide input and aspects of knowledge management for this step).

6. Create and implement a feedback mechanism alongside the policies and guidance (surveys, interviews, etc.) to collect feedback on how useful, feasible and effective the policies and guidance were for the programmers and healthcare workers using them on a daily basis.