Strengthening Economic Evaluation for Multisectoral Strategies for Nutrition (SEEMS-Nutrition)

Strengthening Economic Evaluation for Multisectoral Strategies for Nutrition (SEEMS-Nutrition), a three-year project starting in November 2018, will contribute to improved evidence to support the scaling up of future solutions to enhance nutritious food systems in a rapidly evolving environment of decreasing child and maternal mortality and increasing income, urbanization, commercialization and globalization.  University of Washington is leading this project and partnering with International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Helen Keller International (HKI), Results for Development (R4D) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The research will answer two key questions that (1) advance the most appropriate standardized methods for measuring cost and cost effectiveness of integrated multi-sectoral nutrition strategies and interventions; and (2) generate evidence on costs and benefits, as well as cost-effectiveness, of integrated multi-sectoral approaches to improve nutrition and health outcomes.  The main workstreams include (1) developing a common approach for assessing the costs and benefits of multi-sectoral strategies to improve economic, nutrition and health well-being; (2) integrating cost analyses into on-going pilot projects and large-scale interventions/programs for country level primary cost data collection, analyses and input into economic evaluations; and (3) ensuring policy relevance, identify data users, and encourage uptake of the common economic evaluation framework by additional implementing partners.