From Vertical Nutrition Programs to Integrated Health Systems: Preventing Wasting Through UHC

This event will bring together Health Ministries, donors, civil society organisations and technical experts to shift the conversation on child wasting prevention from vertical, programme-based responses to the full inclusion of nutrition within health systems.
Although nutrition is embedded within primary health care and is recognized as a core component of the health service package—as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO)—it is still too often treated as a separate program. Many essential health services, such as antenatal care, maternal supplementation, counselling, community-based child health, and infection prevention, are routinely offered at community health centers. Yet, nutrition remains insufficiently integrated with these core services.
This event will explore how nutrition can be fully institutionalized within primary health care, maternal, sexual and reproductive health (SRH), child health services, and community health delivery—not as an add-on, but as a standard, essential element of people-centered care. Such high-impact investments in preventing child wasting will help donors and governments shape their strategies and address systemic barriers.
For true integration, health systems must be strengthened with nutrition at their core, aligned with the six pillars of a health system as defined by the WHO:
1. Service Delivery
2. Health Workforce
3. Health Information Systems
4. Access to Essential Medicines and Technologies
5. Health System Financing
6. Leadership and Governance
Integrating nutrition into these pillars will promote health equity, efficiency, quality, responsiveness, and improved overall population health. Ultimately, Universal Health Coverage cannot be achieved without placing nutrition at the center of health systems.
The event will draw on recent evidence and experience to show how investing in Community healthcare worker training and inclusion of nutrition within essential health packages is crucial to achieving Universal Health Coverage and reducing preventable child deaths due to wasting.