Research & Innovation

Through our research and innovation, we are developing better ways to anticipate, prevent, and treat malnutrition so that more children can lead healthy and productive lives and more communities can be free from hunger. Our approach marries science with pragmatism – providing us with the nuts and bolts required to create tangible change, even in the most difficult contexts.

Our diverse portfolio and initiatives, which are intentionally and explicitly fit-for-purpose, aim to achieve the standard of evidence necessary for action on critical issues, while abiding by fundamentally strict ‘do no harm’ principles.

To accomplish this goal, we:

• Advance the evidence base to link research with concrete operational impact
• Conduct impact evaluations, proof of concept pilots, costing studies
• Provide empirically based, data-driven analysis and recommendations
• Prioritize profoundly collaborative partnerships
• Identify clear, culturally appropriate, and sustainable pathways to scale solutions

Our Research

Three main workstreams guide our research activities, ensuring synergy across all our sectors of intervention: prevention of undernutrition, treatment of undernutrition, and anticipating nutritional risk.

Preventing Undernutrition

Challenges remain in understanding the best methods to prevent undernutrition, which can vary across different communities and contexts. Our research seeks to better address the underlying causes and drivers of undernutrition, ultimately working to increase resilience and optimize decision-making.

Treating Undernutrition

Fewer than one in four acutely malnourished children currently have access to lifesaving treatment. We generate evidence to identify innovative ways to detect acute malnutrition, increase availability and accessibility of quality treatment services, and improve health and nutrition information systems.

Research to Identify & Anticipate Nutritional Risk

Our research seeks to identify the drivers of undernutrition and predict increases in nutritional risk – ultimately ensuring that decision-makers have timely, evidence-based information on acute malnutrition that allows them to act ahead of a crisis, rather than during or after its peak.

Examples of our research projects include:

• The Identifying the Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Relapse After Recovery from Severe Acute Malnutrition study aims to better understand relapse after treatment for severe acute malnutrition in South Sudan, Somalia, and Mali.
• Innovations in Management of Acute Malnutrition in the Context of COVID-19 capitalized upon a unique opportunity to learn from programmatic adaptations during the pandemic and generate evidence that may prove useful in ongoing efforts to improve detection and treatment protocols.
• Modelling Early Risk Indicators to Anticipate Malnutrition (MERIAM) aims to improve the prediction and monitoring of acute malnutrition through econometric and computational modelling, with a focus on conflict- and climate-related shocks in Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia.
• Click-MUAC sought to develop and test new devices to detect acute malnutrition, in order to increase the sensitivity and specificity of these measurements when used by mothers and caregivers.
• The Constraints and Complexities of Information and Analysis in Emergencies project examined the technical and political obstacles of producing an independent food insecurity analysis tool in Nigeria.
• The Combined Protocol for Acute Malnutrition Study (ComPAS) aimed to examine whether a simplified and unified acute malnutrition treatment protocol would improve coverage, quality, continuity of care and cost-effectiveness in Kenya and South Sudan.
• The Implementation Research on Linking the Community Management of Acute Malnutrition and Integrated Community Case Management study evaluated the incorporation of acute malnutrition treatment into existing community-based health services to determine if treatment could effectively be implemented by community health workers in Kenya.
• The Evaluating the Effectiveness of Safe Drinking Water in Severe Acute Malnutrition Treatment study investigated whether adding safe drinking water during treatment for severe acute malnutrition reduced treatment time, increased recovery rates, and improved the cost-effectiveness of the treatment program in Pakistan.

Other projects include: the SAM Photo Diagnosis App®, the C-Project, the Modelling an Alternative Nutrition Protocol Generalizable to Outpatient Care (MANGO) study, the Effectiveness, Cost-Effectiveness and Coverage of Severe Acute Malnutrition Treatment Delivered by Community Health Workers in Mali and Senegal study, and the Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial for the Effect of Combining Household Water Treatment and Hygiene Promotion with Standard Outpatient Treatment of Severe Acute Malnutrition on Recovery Rates (TISA).