Research Review 2017
For over 35 years, Action Against Hunger has been at the forefront of the fight against hunger worldwide. Today, our organisation has an established reputation as an evidence-based organisation, capable of providing high-quality technical and operational support, even in the most challenging contexts.
Research is our primary means of assessing and improving the effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability of our actions; of learning how to respond better and faster to beneficiary needs and vulnerabilities, especially in times of crisis; and of leveraging evidence-based advocacy to produce the change we want to see in the world.
Research is fundamental to Action Against Hunger’s ability to innovate, learn, and grow, in order to ultimately better serve our beneficiaries.
Our operational programmes and research are intrinsically linked. Our research is designed as an integral part of our operations and with the explicit aim of generating evidence that will inform programme design and implementation. This is a constant feedback loop; as new results emerge from our research, evidence-based recommendations influence the next iteration of our programming and, simultaneously, support refinement of our research priorities towards additional evidence gaps. By focusing on learning and improvement via our research activities, we aim to increase our impact – reaching more vulnerable people with more safe and effective treatment than we could have before.
Action Against Hunger’s Research Strategy for 2016 – 2020 outlines three priority workstreams for our organisation’s research activities. This strategy outlines how our expertise and capacity can be maximised to address critical gaps in the evidence base and where, over the five-year implementation period, we hope to contribute to tangible improvements in policy and practice. These research workstreams are:
- Prevention of undernutrition: understanding and addressing the causes of hunger;
- Treatment of undernutrition: managing and mitigating the consequences of undernutrition;
- Effectiveness of humanitarian assistance: encouraging preparedness, improving reactivity and a higher quality of response.
In 2017, Action Against Hunger has developed this inaugural Research Review, which is intended to assess and evaluate our progress in research across the organisation. This first report aims to provide an overview of the state of research at Action Against Hunger in 2017, and in this report you will find:
- An overview of our global research activities in 2017: what we did and where, our partners, and how we are tracking critical components of our research like research uptake, partnerships, & capacity building.
- A full list of Action Against Hunger research activities in 2017.
- Highlights of our current research: case studies providing an in-depth look at projects from our existing research portfolio.
- Resources and contacts: for our research work at Action Against Hunger.
- A full list of Action Against Hunger publications in 2017.
