A review of global progress toward the Millennium Development Goal 1 hunger target

This paper reviews global progress toward the Millennium Development Goal 1 Hunger Target. It examines evidence from over 40 community-based programs as well as the most pertinent national and international efforts. Results show that although much effort has been dedicated to achieving this goal, there is still a lot of work to be done. Programs still often address malnutrition, rather than improving long term nutritional outcomes. While critical, these programmes are rooted in the health sector and address disease-related effects and emphasize the immediate determinants of undernutrition. Strategies that adopt multisectoral programming as crucial to address longer-term determinants of undernutrition, such as poverty, gender equality, and functioning food and health systems, remain under-developed and under-researched. The authors suggests that accelerating progress toward the MDG1 is less about the development of innovations and technologies and more about putting what is already known in to practice.

Fanzo, Jessica C., Pronyk, Paul M., Food and Nutrition Bulletin-June 2011