UNICEF funding to evaluate Health and Nutrition Program
Strengthening primary health care systems is at the core of UNICEF’s approach to improving service quality and building health and nutrition system resilience.
Child survival is at the very heart of what UNICEF does. UNICEF’s health and nutrition programme in the Pacific is focused on young childhood survival and development. Children in the Pacific are exposed to countless threats to their health and nutrition. Of the 1,700 children under five who die in the Pacific every year, 80 percent of them die before their first birthday and half of those don’t survive through their first month of life.
Not only does undernutrition decrease a child’s chances of surviving, it prevents children from thriving: it thwarts growth of both the body and the brain, it interferes with learning at school, it reduces economic productivity, and it increases the severity and frequency of illness.
Katherine Gilbert, Nossal Institute for Global Health, will lead an evaluation of UNICEF’s Pacific Health and Nutrition Program. The evaluation by Ms Gilbert and the Health Systems Governance and Finance team, will generate evidence to inform the next Pacific Multi-Country Program development on how to scale-up models to improve quality of care in the Pacific. Findings may also contribute to the UN Pacific Strategy evaluation and subsequently the new UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework.
The Nossal Institute will be collaborating with Fiji National University on the project.