2017 Chapters (Layout Features)

Developing Capacity in Nutrition

Fanzo, Jessica C.; Graziose, Matthew M.

Nutrition is increasingly recognized as a crosscutting issue with massive implications for the social and economic development of nations. While experience and best practices have been amassed with respect to what to do to alleviate the burden of malnutrition, capacity continues to be the critical limiting factor for the scale-up—in both coverage and impact—and sustainability of programs to address malnutrition. Calls for investment in capacity development in nutrition are not new, but are the subject of renewed attention in the face of mounting external pressures on the delivery of successful nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive services. Contributing to the already demanding challenge of addressing malnutrition are the current and anticipated issues that will cause a shift in the global burden of disease, both in type and locus, leading to an increase in food insecurity, a change in food environments, and new pressures on the health system. Capacity development will remain a critical feature of nutrition and development agendas in the coming decades. The Sustainable Development Goals offer an opportunity to excite, inspire, and guide the world in the post-2015 era; it is critical that advancing good nutrition be recognized as an underlying and crosscutting prerequisite to promote sustainable development. To maximize the impact of investments in nutrition, we must intensify efforts to develop the capacities of the future workforce for nutrition. Failure to do so will render the well-meaning goals and targets of the future unattainable.