Research Review 2018
For almost 40 years, Action Against Hunger has been at the forefront of the fight against hunger worldwide. Our organisation has an established reputation for evidence-based action, with a proven track record of providing high-quality technical and operational support, even in the most challenging contexts.
Research is critical to the organisation in assessing and improving the effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability of our actions; of learning how to respond better and faster to the needs and vulnerabilities of people affected by emergencies, especially in times of crisis; and of leveraging evidence-based advocacy to produce the change we want to see in the world.
Action Against Hunger’s Research Strategy for 2016–2020 outlines three priority workstreams for our organisation’s research activities. This focuses our expertise and capacity to address critical gaps in the evidence base where we expect 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 and emergency response: encouraging preparedness, improving reactivity and a higher quality of response.
In this year’s annual Research Review, we are bringing you updates on our global research activities in 2018 including trends over time, as well as casting a lens on the third workstream of our research strategy – how we design and implement research in humanitarian and emergency contexts to improve the effectiveness of our assistance programmes. Our aim for this year’s edition is to highlight where and how Action Against Hunger is leading research efforts in this challenging space, with examples of what we’ve done and what we’ve learned, particularly in those cases where the results of our research were contrary to the proposed hypothesis.
