Conference on ‘Nutrition dynamics in Africa: opportunities and challenges for meeting the sustainable development goals’
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Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Proceedings of the Nutrition Society
Abstract
Social protection (SP) has been demonstrated as an effective tool against poverty and severe
hunger. In Ghana, SP interventions have been employed to address vulnerability to poverty
since 1965. Nevertheless, its potential for enhancing nutrition has hardly been explored. To
harness the cross-sectoral benefits of scaling up nutrition-sensitive actions in Ghana, the
The National Development Planning Commission requested an assessment of nutrition linkages
across existing SP policies and programmes. The present paper presents gaps and opportunities for improving the nutrition-sensitivity of existing SP programming in Ghana. The evidence
draws heavily on desk review of available published and grey literature. The data show that
SP provides an entry point for mainstreaming nutrition into other programmes. However,
designing and coupling SP programmes with nutrition programmes remains a challenge in
Ghana. Local SP interventions are predominantly designed as standalone services and therefore are implemented independently of each other. To increase synergy between SP and nutrition, including nutrition as an explicit objective of SP policies/strategies is recommended
Description
Research Article
Keywords
Nutrition, Social protection, Linkages, Social transfers