Nutrition and Health Integration: A Rapid Review of Published and Grey Literature

In January 2019, ENN conducted a rapid review of the literature in relation to health and nutrition integration, the main findings discovered included that:

• The available literature on the topic reveals a dominant focus on treatment of acute malnutrition, suggesting that, while nutrition within UHC services encompass a whole range of preventive and promotive activities, treatment and its integration into community-based and health facility systems is the main subject in peer-reviewed or grey literature.
• There remains a lack of global consensus on an agreed model for integrating nutrition-specific interventions into health service delivery as well as minimal standards. This review has not been able to report on what optimal nutrition integration looks like, what it costs to reach full integration, what it will take in terms of systems and staff, what sub-optimal or stop-start integration means for the scale-up of evidenced nutrition interventions and, ultimately, what impact this lack of integration at scale has on the mortality, morbidity and nutritional status of individuals and populations.