The Emergency Nutrition Exchange, based out of Dublin, Ireland, has published groundbreaking, field-level technical research about attacking malnutrition for the last few decades. The latest edition, Issue 76 (October 2025) showcases community-led, data-informed, and systems-focused approaches to improving nutrition in fragile and resource-constrained settings, with a strong emphasis on adolescents, maternal nutrition, and service delivery quality.
The lead editorial underscores that practitioners are working in a period of acute crisis, including famine in Gaza, famine risk in Sudan, and constrained global humanitarian funding, yet highlights hopeful examples of innovation, local leadership, and adaptation. Core cross-cutting messages are: community-owned initiatives matter, data and routine information systems can meaningfully guide programme improvements, and linking frontline programming to system-level frameworks and global guidance is crucial to sustain gains. The issue repeatedly concludes that national regulation, better financing (including social protection), and stronger primary healthcare systems are needed to turn promising pilots into scaled, equitable nutrition responses.
Food assistance and local leadership in Sudan and the Sahel
The Sudan article concludes that different displacement contexts require tailored food assistance modalities: central kitchens are effective where households have lost cooking facilities, while food baskets better support dignity and agency in more stable settings. A central finding is that local implementing partners are indispensable for access, contextualised design, and operational continuity, reinforcing calls to invest in local NGO capacity and leadership rather than relying solely on international actors.
Maternal nutrition in humanitarian settings
Analysis from Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Somalia finds that national guidelines and policy frameworks for maternal nutrition are largely in place and that pregnant and breastfeeding women are increasingly included in assessments and targeting. ] However, major gaps persist: maternal nutrition is routinely deprioritised relative to child wasting treatment, antenatal care coverage and quality are low, and key interventions such as multiple micronutrient supplements, balanced energy–protein products, and social protection for pregnant and breastfeeding women remain underfunded or small-scale.
IMAM coverage and use of routine data in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe’s national IMAM coverage assessment, combining routine DHIS2 data, supply databases, and targeted SLEAC surveys, finds low coverage across all assessed districts, with high defaulter and non-recovery rates and recurrent RUTF stock-outs. The analysis shows that routine data can reliably flag bottlenecks such as weak case-finding, poor growth monitoring, and commodity gaps, though data quality problems need continuous attention.
Using MUAC data to estimate wasting people in need in Afghanistan
A letter from Afghanistan describes an adjusted MUAC-based method to estimate wasting people in need when recent SMART survey data are unavailable, using correlations between MUAC and WHZ from historical surveys to correct for MUAC’s underestimation of total wasting.
Humanitarian nutrition must systematically include often-overlooked groups
Key articles stress gaps in maternal nutrition services in emergency settings and highlight the need to integrate infants under six months into SMART surveys through methodological adaptations. Research snapshots further underscore vulnerabilities among adolescents, pregnant women, and infants—groups whose needs frequently fall between existing program mandates. Expanded, life-course-oriented programming is essential to address these blind spots.
As always, the full edition can be downloaded free of charge at https://www.ennonline.net/fex/en/76
