Strengthening Country Commitment To Human Development: Lessons From Nutrition (Directions in Development)

✍ Scribed by Richard Heaver

• Publisher: World Bank Publications
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 114
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

"Malnutrition persists in most developing countries. It contributes to the deaths of 3.4 million children annually and reduces the intelligence, health, and productivity of those who survive. Nutrition programs?indeed all human development programs?succeed or fail depending in part on the commitment of politicians, bureaucrats, and communities to properly implement them, both initially and over the long term. Technical, economic, and organizational issues get the lion?s share of attention in designing nutrition and other human development programs. But the success of such programs often depends on two variables: whether countries back them with adequate financing and whether countries sustain a commitment to high-quality implementation. This book argues that assessing and strengthening country commitment should therefore become a new field of systematic professional practice. This new field requires expertise in political and policy analysis, organizational behavior, and strategic communication.Focusing on a variety of country programs in nutrition?both successful and failed?the book describes practical ways to assess and strengthen commitment and outlines an agenda for ?learning by doing.? In addition to political will, programs need to build support and commitment across government and civil society, from local leaders to parents. To sustain that commitment, organizational structures and processes must be designed to motivate communities and officials over the 15 to 20 years it takes to successfully implement a national nutrition program.This book will especially appeal to those in the fields of nutrition, public health, community and economic development, and political science."

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 7
Foreword......Page 11
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Abbreviations and Acronyms......Page 13
Why Strengthening Commitment Is Important......Page 15
What Commitment Building Involves......Page 16
What We Know and What We Don’t......Page 17
Action Required......Page 18
What the Development Assistance Community Can Do......Page 19
1. Introduction......Page 21
2. Why Is Commitment a Special Problem in Nutrition?......Page 24
Useful Terms......Page 29
Some Relevant Concepts......Page 30
Who Should Assess Commitment and How?......Page 34
Identifying Key Players......Page 35
Assessing Perspectives......Page 36
4.1 A Dozen Behaviors That Signal Commitment to Nutrition......Page 37
Putting It Together......Page 39
Broad or Narrow?......Page 40
Program or Project?......Page 43
Trial or Scale?......Page 44
Investment or Analysis and Partnership Building?......Page 46
Champions, Policy Entrepreneurs, and Supporters......Page 47
Building Partnerships for Nutrition......Page 49
Repositioning Nutrition in PRSPs, PRSCs, and CDD......Page 53
Using NGO–Civil Society Partnerships to Lobby Governments......Page 56
Lessons from Success: Keeping Stakeholders Motivated......Page 58
7.2 TINP: Signs and Consequences of Faltering Commitment......Page 62
7.4 Some Ideas for Keeping Politicians Interested in Nutrition Programs......Page 65
Strengthening Country Capacity for Commitment Building......Page 66
Deploying and Strengthening the International Nutrition Community’s Capacity for Country Commitment Building......Page 69
9. Conclusions and Recommendations......Page 73
A.1 Rationality, Key Focus, and Key Concepts of Public Policy......Page 77
B.1 Stakeholder Groups and Their Members......Page 79
C A Client-Centered Formative Research Approach: Trials of Impr oved Practices (TIPS)......Page 81
D Using PROFILES Simulations as an Advocacy Tool to Promote Investment in Nutrition......Page 83
How Has PROFILES Been Used?......Page 84
What Does PROFILES Cost?......Page 85
E.1 Contribution of Improved Nutrition to the Millennium Development Goals......Page 86
F Sustaining Commitment to Program Implementation through Extrinsic Motivation......Page 88
G.1 BMN Indicators in Thailand’s Village Information System, by Group......Page 91
H Using Monitoring Information as a Motivator: The Tamil Nadu Integrated Nutrition Project......Page 94
Notes......Page 98
References......Page 100
Index......Page 105
4.2 The Philippines in the Early 1990s: Signs of Low Commitment to PEM Reduction......Page 38
5.1 What Costa Rica and Thailand Had in Common......Page 41
5.2 The Tamil Nadu Integrated Nutrition Program: A Focused Intervention......Page 42
5.3 Vitamin A as a Useful Early Intervention......Page 45
6.1 Helping Political Champions: The Uganda Child Development Project......Page 48
6.2 Matching the Type and Channel of Information to the Consumer in Advocacy for Bangladesh’s Integrated Nutrition Project (BINP)......Page 51
6.3 Making Nutrition Everybody’s Business: Sequenced Partnership Building in Thailand......Page 52
6.4 How Investing in Nutrition Helps Government Departments to Achieve Their Own Goals......Page 54
6.5 Advocacy NGOs in the United States: A Major Force in Nutrition......Page 57
7.1 Nutrition Programs Can Build on Traditional or Universal Values and Promote Empowering New Ones......Page 60
7.3 Tanzania’s PEM Program: When Push Came to Shove......Page 63
8.1 Cost of Commitment-Building Activities......Page 67
H.1 Trigger Points for Intervention by the TINP Coordination Office......Page 96