Friday Research Review
1) Performance Incentives for Global Health: Potential and Pitfalls – Brief (source: Center for Global Development)
Rena Eichler and Ruth Levine summarize the findings of their book, Performance Incentives for Global Health: Potential and Pitfalls. Global health donors, like national governments, have traditionally paid for inputs such as doctors’ salaries or medical equipment in the hope that they would lead to better health. Performance incentives offered to health workers, facility managers, or patients turn the equation on its head: they start with the performance targets and let those most directly affected decide how to achieve them. Funders pay (in money or in kind) when health providers or patients reach specified goals. Evidence shows that such incentives can work in a variety of settings. But making them effective requires careful planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation.
2) Global Nutrition Institutions: Is There an Appetite for Change? (source: Center for Global Development)
This paper describes the major institutional weaknesses in global nutrition and presents two recommendations to address the joint problems of incoherence, lack of institutional leaders, and persistent underfunding. First, within the domain of global health—where a significant part of the programmatic response rests—current and potential funding agencies at the international level could create a shared set of principles that lay out expectations for the coordination, coherence, and collaboration among institutions that currently do or might receive funding for global nutrition programs. Funders could collaborate to create a strong incentive for UN agencies, the World Bank, privately funded initiatives, and others to work together to fulfill key functions, including norm-setting, advocacy, scientific inquiry, program and technical support, capacity-building, and implementation at the national level. A second priority is for leaders in UN agencies to act on specific opportunities to elevate the agenda of nutrition security within the work of the UN System High-Level Task Force for the Global Food Security Crisis, which is stimulating and coordinating a response among the UN system and international financial institutions.
3) Developmental Perspectives on Nutrition and Obesity From Gestation to Adolescence (source: CDC, PCD)
Obesity results from a complex combination of factors that act at many stages throughout a person’s life. Therefore, examining childhood nutrition and obesity from a developmental perspective is warranted. A developmental perspective recognizes the cumulative effects of factors that contribute to eating behavior and obesity, including biological and socioenvironmental factors that are relevant at different stages of development. A developmental perspective considers family, school, and community context. During gestation, risk factors for obesity include maternal diet, overweight, and smoking. In early childhood, feeding practices, taste acquisition, and eating in the absence of hunger must be considered. As children become more independent during middle childhood and adolescence, school nutrition, food marketing, and social networks become focal points for obesity prevention or intervention. Combining a multilevel approach with a developmental perspective can inform more effective and sustainable strategies for obesity prevention.