New Approaches in CMAM Programming

This technical positioning summary introduces Action Against Hunger’s Technical Position on Acute Malnutrition and to highlight the interrelationship with the Action Against Hunger Research Strategy for 2016 -2020 and the No Wasted Lives Research Agenda for Acute Malnutrition for our work in 2018 and beyond.

Published: 2018

Action Against Hunger aims to promote effective, scalable, decentralised models of care for children suffering from acute malnutrition. As a leading technical organization in the prevention and treatment of acute malnutrition, Action Against Hunger is routinely requested to provide evidence-based advice and guidance on key technical, operational and policy related matters. We believe Action Against Hunger has a key role to play in shaping future debates on acute malnutrition policy and practice, as well as to ensure that programmatic and policy shifts are based on a robust body of evidence to improve the reach and effectiveness of existing treatment.

As part of this commitment, Action Against Hunger was instrumental in setting up the No Wasted Lives Coalition in 2016. Linked with our SAM2020 Agenda, No Wasted Lives offers a valuable opportunity for Action Against Hunger to actively improve coordination across critical stakeholders working on acute malnutrition, including a particular focus on research and innovation, in order to achieve our ambitious aims.

We recognise that our role in both delivering services to vulnerable communities as well as influencing the research and policy approaches of the broader sector means that we must be in a position to simultaneously: 1) provide guidance to our operational programmes based on the current evidence available whilst; 2) driving critical research to answer outstanding questions and drive innovation.

To enable this, the purpose of this note is to introduce the Action Against Hunger’s Technical Position on Acute Malnutrition and to highlight the interrelationship with the Action Against Hunger Research Strategy for 2016 -2020 and the No Wasted Lives Research Agenda for Acute Malnutrition for our work in 2018 and beyond.