Project

Generating insights for the Indian Government’s flagship nutrition program

Divya Nair , Neha Raykar , Will Thompson , Aditi Gupta , Neha Verma , Rohan Raj , Ishaan Bansal , Shubhi Jindal , Debendra Nag , Kuldeep Shukla 1 October 2021

The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) is working with NITI Aayog – the policy innovation arm of the Indian government – on critical issues around health and nutrition for women and children. IDinsight is partnering with both organizations to support monitoring and evaluation efforts for health programming delivered via POSHAN Abhiyaan.

Kasha Solanki, a teacher at the BALSEWA Daycare Center, sits with her student, three-year-old Prince Gupta, who attends the Center while his mother works. © Paula Bronstein/Getty Images/Images of Empowerment

Decision-maker’s challenge

In 2017-18, the Government of India launched POSHAN Abhiyaan, the central government’s flagship nutrition mission focused on reducing stunting, undernutrition, and anemia among young children, pregnant and lactating women, and adolescent girls. IDinsight is helping provide rigorous evidence to assess the impact of health programs delivered by POSHAN Abhiyaan and make policy recommendations for their scale-up.

Impact opportunity

Malnutrition in early life can have long-lasting effects on health, including physical and cognitive development. India continues to struggle with high levels of malnutrition – including stunting and wasting. POSHAN Abhiyaan is a multi-ministerial mission developed to facilitate better delivery of nutrition-related services. It also uses technology to improve nutrition monitoring and aims to build ‘a people’s movement’ around addressing malnutrition. IDinsight is helping CIFF and NITI produce timely and actionable data to continue to strengthen the program.

Our approach

IDinsight is leveraging our Data on Demand infrastructure to conduct multiple rounds of data collection across 12 districts in two Indian states throughout 2019-20. We are working closely with CIFF and NITI to collect relevant, timely indicators related to POSHAN Abhiyaan.