Success factors in community-based nutrition programmes

Abstract

Community-based nutrition programmes (CBNPs) generally include such activities as growth monitoring, breast-feeding promotion, nutrition education, promotion of better weaning practices, and sometimes micronutrient programmes and deworming. Defining success in these programmes involves the attainment of objectives related to process, outcome, and sustainability (financial and functional), all of which are influenced by sociopolitical, technical, and financial factors. Four well-known programmes generally acknowledged as successful are used to illustrate the combination of contextual (sociopolitical), programmatic (technical), and financial factors that ensure success in CBNPs. The more technical programmes are more instructive and replicable, given the difficulty in creating conductive sociopolitical factors. However, the evidence demonstrates that with careful design and phased implementation of different components, nutrition activities can enhance positive sociopolitical factors, thereby creating a positive context for nutrition programmes and for capacity building for the broader challenge of social development.