Insights and reflections by Deanna Olney (Director of IFPRI’s Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit) and Mduduzi Mbuya (Director of Knowledge Leadership, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, GAIN), Co-Chairs of Track B of the Micronutrient Forum’s 7th Global Conference. Opinions are the authors’.

Micronutrient malnutrition—insufficient intake of key vitamins and minerals—affects one in two children and two in three women worldwide. While significant advances have been made in understanding its drivers and identifying effective interventions, important scientific and programmatic challenges remain. At the same time, mounting external pressures threaten to worsen the problem: climate shocks are disrupting food systems, conflicts are displacing communities, and development financing is shrinking and shifting.

These conditions frame the Micronutrient Forum’s 7th Global Conference, convening in Accra, Ghana, September 28-October 1 under the theme “Nutrition at the Frontiers of a Changing Environment.” Within this broader focus, a critical question emerges: how can we work together to reduce micronutrient deficiencies as these challenges become more complex?

Track B: Program implementation and effectiveness

Improving micronutrient outcomes requires not only evidence-based interventions but also a clear understanding of why such programs succeed or fail. For conditions like anemia, a limited grasp of context- and population-specific drivers can undermine effectiveness. However, even when an intervention is appropriate for a specific deficiency and has been shown to be effective, problems with implementation such as targeting, coverage, quality, intensity, duration, and scale can limit its impact.

Amid increasingly constrained funding for nutrition programs and intensifying competition for limited resources, there is an urgent need to make every investment count. This requires clear, contextualized evidence of the drivers of micronutrient malnutrition, along with careful attention to how interventions are designed, implemented, and scaled. It also requires a collective commitment to collaborating across sectors, disciplines, and organizational roles. By working together, the global nutrition community can understand the drivers more precisely, align interventions with them, and generate, share, and apply evidence that strengthens effectiveness, scalability, and impact.

Micronutrient Forum Track B (one of three thematic tracks) focuses on understanding what works, how, for whom, and under what conditions, and translating that evidence and investment into effective, scalable, and investable programs. The track expands beyond the Forum’s traditional health-systems lens to consider how social protection, agriculture, and food systems can contribute to better micronutrient outcomes. Sessions will bring together researchers, implementers, and decisionmakers to examine how different systems and delivery models can drive sustained impact.

Optimizing investment

In an environment with limited resources available, working strategically and synergistically is essential. One of Track B’s plenary sessions, Doing Better with Less: Optimizing Investments for Nutrition Impact (which we are co-chairing), will confront this challenge head-on. The session will center around the need to leverage existing resources to tackle the drivers of micronutrient deficiencies by strategically aligning sectors and disciplines to enhance program design and delivery.

“Addressing malnutrition—including micronutrient deficiencies—requires every sector to deliver on its commitments,” said plenary session panelist Ali Winoto Subandoro, Senior Nutrition Specialist at the World Bank. “The World Bank supports governments in scaling up multisectoral convergence programs by aligning investments, strengthening accountability, and incentivizing performance around a common result. Through data-driven prioritization of high-impact interventions, results-based financing, robust monitoring systems, and the strategic use of evidence for course correction, we can accelerate equitable progress and achieve measurable gains in micronutrient status and malnutrition prevention at scale.”

The question of what works to improve micronutrient nutrition will be addressed across several sessions under Track B. An abstract-driven session will take a broad look at a variety of solutions, while curated sessions will explore sectoral contributions: how integrated and equitable health systems can advance micronutrient security, how social protection programs can be designed to improve diets and nutritional status, and how agriculture and food systems can help close persistent micronutrient gaps. Additional sessions will examine the realities of program delivery, such as navigating food system trade-offs and driving demand for nutritious foods. Together, these sessions will explore how new approaches can fill evidence gaps and strengthen decision-making.

Elevating local leadership

Smarter investments and stronger programs raise a further question: who should lead the charge? Increasingly, the answer points to national and regional leadership. Doing better with less also means shifting from a top-down approach toward models that elevate local expertise, align programs with national policies, and facilitate engagement between stakeholders, policymakers, and consumers. A session on localization for nutrition system resilience will unpack this topic, drawing on national, regional, and global initiatives.

“I look forward to hearing the real-world experiences of our panelists as they share what localization looks like in practice,” said Mai Hoang, Public Health Nutrition Advisor at Helen Keller International and moderator of the localization session. “Building resilient nutrition systems starts with empowering local actors to lead, while drawing on regional and global partnerships to support learning, innovation, and accountability.”

Safeguarding data

Effective programs also depend on having strong data to guide decisions. However, evidence gaps persist in many parts of the world, limiting our ability to understand needs, target interventions, and demonstrate impact. The plenary Safeguarding Data for Nutrition Amid Funding Constraints, co-chaired by Mduduzi Mbuya (GAIN) and Rebecca Heidkamp (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), will consider how the nutrition community can adapt to a changing landscape, including through innovation, to protect the data assets, systems, and capacities needed to inform micronutrient programs.

“Our session on ‘Safeguarding Data for Nutrition’ speaks to this unique moment we find ourselves in,” Heidkamp said. “We know that when resources are constrained, data and information systems can become a lower priority than service provision. Yet, as Kofi Annan said, ‘Without good data we are flying blind. If you can’t see it, you can’t solve it.’ And at a time of such uncertainty, we need to know what is happening.”

Bringing the pieces together

The challenges facing nutrition are becoming more complex, but they also present an opportunity for more coordinated, collaborative action. Optimizing evidence-based investments, elevating local leadership, and safeguarding data are interconnected priorities for improving nutrition programs. Localization serves as a connective thread: country-driven approaches are what link investment to impact, enabling the most efficient use of resources to reach those most in need.

Track B will facilitate these important conversations in Accra. We invite you to join us as the global nutrition community comes together to consider how we can adapt, collaborate, and continue making progress against malnutrition in a rapidly changing world.