Nutrition Assessment Services

Action Against Hunger’s Nutrition Information Services provide direct and remote support with the planning and implementation of nutrition assessments.

Published: 2019

A Nutrition assessment is the systematic process of collecting and interpreting information in order to make decisions about the nature and cause of a public health nutrition situation. Nutrition assessments provide evidence to inform decisions, select priorities, and develop strategies and advocacy messages.

Over a number of years, many types of nutrition assessments have been developed and perfected. Each has a different aim, but all are integral to a nutrition programme’s project cycle. For example, SMART nutrition surveys allow practitioners to quantify the scale of a problem, while Nutrition Causal Analyses show what might have caused it. Meanwhile, coverage assessments (SQUEAC/SLEAC) evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic and supplementary feeding programmes in terms of met need, allowing programmes to act on identified barriers to care, while Cost Effectiveness Analyses can shed light on how effective those interventions are from a financial perspective. A combination of some or all of these methodologies can contribute to a Nutrition Surveillance System.

Action Against Hunger’s Nutrition Information Services provide direct and remote support with the planning and implementation of nutrition assessments, covering the entire project cycle of CMAM programmes. We are experts in a wide range of coverage assessment methodologies, including SQUEAC1, SLEAC2, Community assessments, Bottleneck Analyses, Nutrition Causal Analyses (Link NCA), and SMART nutrition surveys. Our expertise also includes nutrition research design and implementation, including economic evaluations covering costing, cost-efficiency, and cost-effectiveness analyses. Action Against Hunger also has extensive experience in nutrition surveillance systems and the evaluation of nutrition programmes’ performance.

The Nutrition Assessment Team is based in Action Against Hunger’s offices in London, Paris, Toronto and Amman.

Download the brochure to understand what each service that the team offers entails, along with useful information to help you decide which nutrition assessment service is appropriate in any given context.