Study aims to help policymakers working with limited budgets
The health of children in some of Kenya’s poorest counties could be improved without increasing spending by directing funding to more cost- effective nutrition interventions, according to a study by researchers at AKU and other institutions. Developed for the World Bank by researchers in Australia, Optima Nutrition is a modeling tool that makes it possible to optimize spending across a range of nutrition interventions to minimize stunting and wasting in children, as well as anaemia in children and pregnant women.
Drawing on data on demographics, nutrition outcomes and intervention coverage and costs, Instructor Morris Ogero and Associate Professor Anthony Ngugi used the tool to estimate the impact of optimizing nutrition budgets in the 24 counties with the poorest nutrition outcomes in Kenya. Data came from seven sources, including Kenya’s Population and Housing Census and Demographic and Health Survey.
The Optima model includes interventions proven either to directly reduce stunting, wasting, anaemia and mortality, or to reduce their risk factors, such as preterm birth, failure to breastfeed and diarrhoea. The effect of optimizing budgets was projected for a 10-year period and compared to a baseline scenario in which 2019 spending was continued.
In most counties, to lower the number of stunted children, the model reallocated resources to achieve high coverage of multiple micronutrient supplementation, balanced energy- protein supplementation, lipid-based nutrition supplementation and Vitamin A supplementation. For example, in Baringo county, the model shifted resources from zinc tablets and oral rehydration salts (used to treat diarrhoea) to lipid-based nutrition supplements. Doing so yielded an estimated reduction in the prevalence of stunting from 40 percent to 33 percent over the 10-year modelling period.
The study team has begun engaging with policymakers and nutrition programme planners at the national and county levels to consider how incremental progress toward the optimal budget allocations generated using the Optima model can be achieved. Additionally, they hope to test the impact of implementing the model’s recommendations. Ogero and Ngugi worked with researchers from the Burnet Institute in Australia, which developed the Optima Nutrition tool, as well as with Kenya’s Ministry of Health.