USAID Advancing Nutrition Technical Update: Using PROFILES and Nutrition Costing for Nutrition Advocacy

Lasting improvements in nutrition are best achieved through country commitment and investment. But engaging national stakeholders that work across different sectors to develop a shared national vision for nutrition also requires information to support advocacy efforts for targeted investments to improve nutrition. Two tools that can provide that information are PROFILES and nutrition costing, which form part of a nutrition advocacy planning process developed by the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project (FANTA)/FHI 360, with funding from USAID. Nutrition costing estimates the costs of implementing a comprehensive set of nutrition programs or interventions in a country or prioritized geographic area over a specific time period. PROFILES is a spreadsheet-based nutrition advocacy tool that calculates the consequences in terms of health and development outcomes if malnutrition does not improve over a defined time period and the benefits of improved nutrition over the same time period. PROFILES and nutrition costing can be used together to advocate for government and stakeholder investment in and commitment to multi-sectoral nutrition interventions.

Kavita Sethuraman, Elisabeth Sommerfelt, and Tara Kovach, experts in the development and use of PROFILES, nutrition costing, and nutrition advocacy, share their experience using the PROFILES tool and nutrition costing for nutrition advocacy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.