Worldwide—Nutrition Action for Systemic Change (NASC)

Nutrition Action for Systemic Change (NASC) is contracted through the Expert Advisory Call Down Service 2 (EACDS2) Lot 4: Climate, Nature and Global Health funded by the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). EACDS technical advisory services provide rapid, quality-assured, short-term technical expertise to support the development of U.K. aid programs.

NASC provides specific technical expertise on nutrition and food systems, building on previous achievements funded by the FCDO. NASC supports FCDO to uphold its commitments made at the 2021 Tokyo Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit to integrate nutrition across its aid portfolio in different sectors, spend at least £1.5 billion up to 2030 on programs that help improve nutrition, and adopt and embed the Nutrition Policy Marker (NPM) within FCDO systems. The facility is a one-year initiative following on from the Technical Assistance to Strengthen Capabilities (TASC) Project, which contributed to improved nutrition planning and programming and accelerated action on nutrition as part of the Technical Assistance for Nutrition (TAN) Programme.

Our consortium partners are NutritionWorks, Development Initiatives, The Natural Resources Institute (NRI) and Options.

NASC supports FCDO’s objectives to reform food systems to promote healthy and sustainable diets, integrate nutrition into health systems, respond to food and nutrition crises, and establish close links with FCDO’s broader commitment to end preventable deaths of mothers, newborns, and children by 2030, including in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

Technical assistance is provided as short- or long-term expertise and targets programs across all stages, from design to implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and learning. NASC’s approach revolves around ensuring good coordination, communication, engagement, capacity building, and production of high-quality deliverables.

Sample Activities

• Supporting FCDO’s initiatives globally and at country level to end preventable deaths of mothers, babies, and children by improving nutrition through universal health coverage.
• Building the capacity of FCDO advisors to develop and monitor strategic approaches to integrate nutrition across sectors, particularly in health, food, and agriculture (including commercial agriculture), social protection, humanitarian assistance, economic development, and climate, with the goal of strengthening nutrition outcomes.
• Strengthening programming and resilience of services to treat and prevent child wasting in the face of climate change.
• Supporting the improvement, use, and learning around nutrition information systems for decision-making.

Select results

• Developed a framing paper to support FCDO in advocating for nutrition integration into primary health care systems as part of the Universal Health Coverage agenda.
• Completed a review of 827 FCDO programs and now supporting multisectoral nutrition integration in selected priority programs in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and South Sudan.
• Engaging with seven commercial agriculture programs to support FCDO’s response to the International Commission on Aid Impact (ICAI) review of UK aid to agriculture in a time of climate change.
• Conducted a review of nutrition-related information systems in Afghanistan, mapping all data sources, and developed a recommendation brief for FCDO to improve decision-making and presented findings to partners to strengthen the response to malnutrition.
• Advised FCDO Zambia to invest in agri-processing to support healthy and nutritious in their private sector development program under TASC. Currently supporting FCDO Zambia to integrate nutrition more widely across their program portfolio including in climate resilience and social protection programming.