| Globally, nearly 1 billion people are food insecure, the majority of whom live in developing countries. One measure of food insecurity, the prevalence of children under-5 years of age that are underweight, is estimated to underlie the deaths of 3.1 million children globally each year, representing nearly 45% of all mortality in this age category. There are multiple underlying causes of food insecurity, including unclean water, political instability, lack of health services, climate change, and low rates of education. These underlying causes require actions by multiple sectors in order to improve food security outcomes. These interventions, termed "nutrition-sensitive interventions," include food security programs, agricultural development, education, water and sanitation projects, poverty reduction, and women's empowerment. However, indicators for measuring the impact of nutrition-sensitive interventions are often discipline and project specific, and do not address a broad range of multi-sectorial indicators. Thus, current programs miss key elements of drivers and barriers to food security and fail to incorporate these to ensure success of programs. One framework that has informed the design of multi-sector food security programs in developing countries is the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA), developed by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID). Applications of the SLA demonstrate that households most successful in maintaining food security do so in ways that maximize multiple types of assets. This view of food security focuses on households' long-term resilience to external shocks that can disrupt it, and directs intervention activities to multi-sector, participatory processes for solutions that come from within communities rather than providing single-sector, short-term services that are externally driven. The SLA has primarily been applied at the household level; however, food security and livelihoods strategies are multi-dimensional and influenced by community, organizational, and political environments. To address this gap, my research integrates an ecological systems approach to the SLA model to consider the inter-relationships at the different household, community, political, and institutional levels to improve the design and evaluation of food security programs. |
