Closed Captioning Transcript

John Fawcett: Hi and welcome to the results webinar for January 2016.  I am John Fawcett, head of advocacy.  In December, we took time to celebrate successes from 2015.  This month we will look ahead to 2016.  We have Lawrence Haddad to talk to us about nutrition.  You will hear about group planning, and shares that illustrate the power of meeting face to face with congress members and the media.  One listen is that cell phone rings might be your senator.  As you take time to plan activities for the year, I hope you make note this June.  5-28 in Washington DC.  We have worked to grow it.  We are putting together information, inspiration, and action.  Hope to see you in June.  Thinking about our progress on ending poverty and where there are specific opportunities to do that, nutrition is a priority.  To understand this better, I am happy to introduce Lawrence Haddad.  He is a senior research fellow at the poverty health division.  He was director of Sussex from 2004-2014.  Before that he lectured on development economics.  He lectures on poverty, and food nutrition.  He writes the global nutrition report.  He might talk more about that.  He is not just an academic, but also one of the most thoughtful people we have worked with.  He blogs at development horizons dot com.  To introduce you Lawrence, or the folks to you, many people were instrumental.  They helped get 17 senators on a letter and generated op eds, etc.  We will take that work forward.  Thank you for joining us today.  We look forward to your comments on nutrition.  

Go ahead Lawrence.  

Haddad: is this clear?  OK.  Thank you for the introduction.  Nutrition is an issue that everyone feels responsible for.  We rely on folks like you to make sure it is not so invisible.  To make sure researchers, everyone thinks about nutrition a lot.  Why?  They should invest for several reasons.  These statistics are in this report.  

The first you should remember from your dreams is that 45% of child mortality is related to nutrition.  That is enormous.  When you add morbidity, and Africa, you see the child nutrition is much higher than HIV AIDS.  This is a threat to life, to quality of life, but also kids educational attainment and their productivity in the labor force.  Stunted kids attain 1-2 grades less.  That schooling goes through labor force, wage rates, hours they get.  That suggests that these families who are not malnourished, thirty years later, are 1/3 less likely to live in poverty.  That is extraordinary.  Their ability is much higher.  When you compare the benefits to the costs, the ratio is extraordinary.  We have some estimates of 6K and up.  In the middle, those estimates are 16 dollars generated from one dollar investment.  Half have more, half have less.  That is like a ten percent compound rate for 40 years.  Much greater return than the US stock market.  When you add that nutrition and rights of children, you have a powerful argument for investing.  

The report that just came out shows good and bad news.  Of 110 countries with data, about 39 are on target to meet their goals set from the world health assembly in 2011.  Nearly 40 countries on track, up from 25.  A positive story.  For scale, India which is home to 1/3 of malnourished children released a study showing 14 million less stunted kids now than the mid 2000s.  That is fantastic.  Other countries are posting rapid declines.  Ghana, west Africa.  We think of 40%.  Ghana stunting last year was 19%.  We now know that stunting indicators can be halved.  We see improvement in child overweight.  Some things are hard to shift.  Anemia in women of reproductive age is about 30% globally.  It relates to worms, parasites, and is difficult to treat.  Adult obesity and overweight is increasing in every country in the world.  

There are six Cs.  First is commitment.  You have to acknowledge it is build commitment.  It is invisible unless it is acute.  If everyone is stunted, you don't see it.  You don't see budgets because there is no ministry of nutrition.  It is vital to raise the issue.  We don't have to wait, you can build it.  Second is coverage.  We have a number of high impact interventions that work.  Vitamin A, food fortification, zinc supplication, etc.  When we look at coverage rates, people who need them, they are low.  30-40%.  

Third is coherence.  We need all society to come together.  Think about what creates malnutrition.  We need a powerful set of forces to overcome malnutrition.  Sanitation, education, agriculture, we need everyone to come together.  You can do the same program in different areas for more impact.  Donors have to quadruple their giving.  They have quadrupled their spending over the last ten years, so it is possible.  Donors can't do it alone though.  If governments don't help, it will be unsustainable set of improvements.  We need to pressure USAID, DFAID, etc.  Also the government of Nigeria, Vietnam, India.  

The final C is counting.  We need data to assess progress, hold people accountable.  Economists like data.  We have to wait up to seven years sometimes for comprehensive national data.  The analysis for the   2016 report shows that countries who make pledges do better in following that goal.  Finally, money.  But all of these things have to be smart, at the specific measurable time.  If not they are fluff, it looks good and sounds good for a month.  People can't eat smart pledges.  

In London we had 100 signatories who made 250 pledges.  About 1/3 were smart.  I am looking for greater sets of signatures.  Many didn't sign up.  Thailand, Philippines.  Many donors like Norway, Sweden.  I am looking for more signatures, more commitments.  I am looking for smart commitments, specific timelines and amounts and accountability.  That is what I look for with Rio.  The US has been big in resurgence talks of nutrition.  I am looking for the new USAID administrator to be a champion, and the new administration in 2017 continues the work done in the last years.  I believe things get done when we write to congressmen, etc.  They make a nuisance in the best possible way.  We don't accept 25% as normal or acceptable.  9,000 kids die daily, 3 million annually.  

Their fingers were stubby in one area from sucking their fingers.  They had rice water and nothing else.  I was shocked.  

Fawcett: that is a great new year’s resolution.  You can ask questions in the chat box or raise a flag to email those to Lisa Marchal.  You talked about obesity, child and adult.  Can you connect those two?  

Haddad: for the last 15 years we have found that kids who are stunted and malnourished in the first years of life, deprived in the womb of nutrients, immune responses, care, health inputs adjust to the life of deprivation.  When they get to 30 or 50 years of age, their metabolisms and lifestyles slow down.  Urbanization occurs.  They move less, more susceptible to diabetes, hypertension, etc.  They are more likely to be afflicted by those risk factors.  

The more we spend treating obesity, the less for malnutrition.  We must connect them financially.  Usually decisionmakers do not have malnutrition.  They might be overweight, but there is a political connection.  

Fawcett: can you talk about intersections between nutrition and climate?  What drives lack of nutrition, that money isn't available or that food is not available?  

Haddad: it allows health ministers and others to go to political leaders is say that we need to do more.  Second,  It legitimates a formal tracking process.  There are three very explicit nutrition bases.  It legitimates formal tracking.  They have to formulate serious responses about why it is progressing or not.  They are not bound, but they help us.  Champions.  Climate has two connections to climate and nutrition.  It is trying to shake up the climate and nutrition advocates to work together.  

The other connection is that healthier diets, with lower red meat and processing, tend to have a lower environmental footprint and pump out fewer greenhouse gases.  We want to form a common cause with those who want to fundamentally change how we eat.  Some people need more meat, some need less.  A lot is poverty.  It is difficult to get anything other than rice or potatoes.  To buy anything else.  Because most foods require diversity of diet.  In low income environments.  It is low income and unhealthy environments.  I was at home at Christmas and there was only fast food.  Too expensive, too far away, or does the food industry just keep telling you something is exciting, diverse, trendy?  Those six Cs are not.  

We can do something.  We can get rates way down.  

Fawcett: thank you for joining us.  We look forward to working with you during 2016.  I will give you a campaign update now.  You see why I want to hear from him, and to remember that 45% number.  I want to talk about the appropriations work around the holidays.  Congress wrapped up a spending bill, and the earned income tax measure.  Our work on appropriations is delayed gratification.  We work on the first quarter of the year.  We wanted to celebrate successes from the FY 2015 apprptns bill.  We have reversed cuts or protected funding.  Reversing a proposed 19% cut.  When you total those, it is almost a half a billion in restored funding.  It is remarkable to count increased funding.  Now Ken with grassroots cafe.  

Patterson: Happy new year, hope you had a great break.  I was thinking about 2016 and wrote a few things.  When I opened notes to get the workweek starting, I found that discomfort is the norm.  That hit me as odd, but I like it.  When I think about the mission of results, and empowering personal breakthroughs, the status quo won't get it done.  You heard that from Lawrence.  

You have generated over 200 pieces of media from 36 states or more.  Please reach out to a republican colleague to move forward.  Some folks who are easy yeses have been challenging.  We ask you to go take risks.  I encourage you to take this challenge to rise above the party and bring republicans along.  Let's hear from two folks who talk with republican senators.  There is a Kansas group who engaged their senator.  

Garrett Wilkinson: we were unable to get a face to face meeting, and instead went to a town hall meeting.  One of our speakers was quoted in the newspaper.  We knew it was the thought in the messaging.  After the meeting we worked to the senator and handed him our paper.  He called me on my cell phone to thank me for our impact.  He expressed his vote to help funding.  We have a meeting next Friday about co-sponsoring the Reach Act.  They know us just from the op-ed.  

Alice Aluoch: we talked with senator Chris Coons, and he was very supportive.  He talked about how people don't understand foreign aid.  It makes incredible difference.  We need to talk about impacting the story.  We shared the media mark in different states.  

Patterson: now I want to talk about breakthroughs, and opportunities to make new group norms.  You can decide how to work, communicate, what leadership to take on, etc.  It is important to have a conversation about how to work.  There are no secrets, it is clear we have all made decisions.  Set a norm to meet twice in a month.  Do a virtual meeting to be in contact.  Map out how to create political will in the community.  You can plan for the international conference, June 25-28.  Make plans for that.  You can talk about scheduling with congress early in the year.  

Finally, you can lay out a plan to engage new people.  I want to ask Dave Burns about engaging new people.  David, are you there?  

Burns: we want to invite people to our events and follow up.  Your regional coordinator will lead this training.  We hope they schedule two outreach events this year, and the team is committed to those being successes.  We take that on in new Jersey.  

Patterson: if you want to learn information about your conference people, join that.  Using the champion scale, and messaging effectively on appropriations.  I will end here, I want you to let us know in chat the name of your city and how many people are in the room.  If you are on by phone, put that in email to lmarchal@results.org.  Send a note with who is in the room.  I want to thank you for not being satisfied with the status quo.  I am excited about our advocacy opportunities.  I will let you unmute now.