This report demonstrates how integrating nutrition across different sectors can improve efforts to end child malnutrition and proposes a framework to prioritise action. It shows that redesigning programmes in five key sectors to include specific nutrition outcomes could help governments to address the causes of child malnutrition and to support the development of their nations.

The report finds that across all sectors, the empowerment of girls and women is essential if nutrition is to be improved in the long term. Strong evidence shows that women place greater priority on family and child welfare and are more likely to spend family incomes on nutritious food and healthcare.

Increasing access to education is also critical. Education equips parents with the essential knowledge they need to care for and feed their children – designing curriculums so that they teach future parents these essential messages is one of the nutrition-sensitive interventions identified in the report.

It provides a framework for high-level decision makers in different countries and organisations to prioritise the sectors and programmes to focus on for their nutrition sensitive investments.

The report provides the following recommendations to decision-makers:
• Nutrition-specific interventions, which directly tackle and prevent malnutrition, must be scaled up and combined with nutrition-sensitive interventions to bring an end to the global nutrition crisis.
• National governments and external actors must collect and make available much more evidence on the effectiveness of nutrition-sensitive interventions.
• National governments and external actors must improve their understanding of how working across sectors can improve child nutrition outcomes.
• All actors must work together to develop a consistent approach to prioritising nutrition interventions, and co-ordinate activities so that they complement each other.