Practical pathways to integrate nutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene

Box 1: Pathways to success

1. Leadership: Secure the highest-level leadership, from the prime minister or president, to drive cross-ministerial coordination and hold line ministries to account for integration of WASH and nutrition.
2. Policies: First, ensure national and regional development plans take a multisector approach to integrating nutrition and WASH interventions, aiming to improve child nutrition. Second, ensure specific policies for nutrition and WASH are coordinated and cross-refer to one another.
3. Financing and strong government systems: Fully finance national WASH and nutrition plans, with clearly defined financing strategies across ministries that support better coordination.
4. Data: Governments and donors must prioritise investments in data systems to enable effective targeting and prioritisation, and reliable monitoring.
5. Sub-national coordination: Replicate strong national coordination mechanisms at sub-national level, ensuring 360-degree accountability.
6. Knowledge sharing: Local authorities, civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations and donors should prioritise documenting and sharing knowledge and experience from integrated WASH-nutrition projects to support governments to adopt and scale up models that work.
7. Accountability: Ensure transparency and accountability: this is key to driving multisector approaches.

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