ELEVATE Nutrition

ELEVATE Nutrition (Enhancing Local Efforts for Vital, Transformative, and Evidence-Based Nutrition) is one of the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID's) flagship initiatives focused on improving the nutritional well-being of women and children, particularly during the crucial first 1,000 days from pregnancy and the first two years of life. Led by FHI 360 in collaboration with a consortium of strategic partners, the five-year project is committed to bridging the gap between global evidence and local implementation envisioning a world where all women and children thrive with optimal nutrition.

Our mission focuses on empowering national and subnational leaders to drive the implementation of key nutrition programs and policies. We have identified three strategic objectives:

•    Sustained USAID global technical leadership in nutrition
•    Enhanced delivery of evidence-based nutrition policies and programs
•    Enhanced nutrition learning and knowledge transfer

We are committed to strengthening multisectoral nutrition governance. This entails ensuring that policies and programs are evidence-based, locally led, inclusive, and transparent. We will provide demand driven technical assistance for countries’ nutrition priorities. Through these strategic initiatives, we aim to make significant and sustainable improvements in nutrition outcomes, thereby enhancing the well-being of individuals and communities.

We deliver this vision alongside partners such as Action Against Hunger, Bixal, Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA), and GEMNet-Health. 

Challenges

Good nutrition is essential to the health and well-being of communities and to sustainable development. The project aims to combat multi-faceted nutritional challenges, focusing on women and children in their first 1,000 days from pregnancy and first two years of life respectively. These include core governance challenges, complex socio-economic factors, cultural norms, and limited access, particularly in fragile and conflict affected contexts. Addressing these requires multi-sectoral collaboration, institutional strengthening, cultural sensitivity, and sustained commitment.

Expertise

We are committed to building upon existing resources and platforms; employing localization principles; and integrating gender and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility into all aspects of our technical assistance. 
We adopt a comprehensive multi-sectoral approach that combines evidence-based methodologies and innovative tools to deliver impactful outcomes.

Our approach includes: 

• Providing responsive, context-specific technical assistance aligned with local priorities
• Facilitating the operationalization and financing of national nutrition policies and quality programming
• Creating platforms and resources for straightforward access to learning and skill building that amplify local achievements in nutrition

We are committed to providing demand-based support across the policy cycle.

Impact

Through sustained efforts, we seek to promote sustained technical leadership to enhance diet quality, strengthen programming for wasting prevention and treatment, promote healthier nutrition behaviors and norms, and to strengthen multi-sectoral nutrition governance. We aim to enhance local capacity to apply evidence-based approaches for nutrition programming and policies and to leverage knowledge and learning at local, national, regional, and global levels to inform the design, implementation, and management of multi-sectoral nutrition programs and policies.