MERIAM

Research: Action Against Hunger’s Approach to Improving Malnutrition Forecasts

Modeling Early Risk Indicators to Anticipate Malnutrition (MERIAM) is Action Against Hunger’s flagship project to improve early warning and anticipatory action for hunger crises, with a focus on malnutrition among children under five.

Identifying malnutrition risks before a crisis escalates can save lives. To date, nearly half (45%) of deaths among children under age five are triggered by malnutrition. One in three children in low- and middle-income countries suffer from chronic malnutrition.

Despite ongoing efforts to treat malnutrition before it’s too late, around 75% of malnourished children around the world lack access to life-saving treatment, and two million die from the condition every year.

Innovative detection tools, like the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), or the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), constitute current best practices to project food insecurity. MERIAM seeks to complement these existing efforts. It does so by zooming in on malnutrition outcomes and then forecasting malnutrition prevalence up to 12 months in advance, longer than what existing systems allow.

Why is early warning and anticipatory action important?

It’s simple: act now before disaster strikes. Using proactive measures to prevent humanitarian crises can reduce the cost of response by as much as 30%. The earlier we respond, the earlier we can limit negative impacts and address emerging needs. This could mean anything from increasing humanitarian aid, providing cash assistance for vulnerable populations, rehabilitating water supplies, and distributing food: all before malnutrition manifests.

To act early, we need a good evidence base. This is where MERIAM comes in. The project aims to enhance the capacity to project malnutrition levels. MERIAM aspires to improve decision -making, resource allocation, and life-saving actions. The goal is to enable decision makers to act ahead of crisis rather than during or after its peak. By planning our interventions preventively and proactively rather than reactively, we can save more lives and resources than ever before. The research has already resulted in a number of publications (see below), most recently an analysis of the role environmental and conflict conditions play as lead indicators in forecasting the prevalence of child acute malnutrition. These build largely on work completed during MERIAM Part 1.

MERIAM Part 1: (2017-2021)

In essence, the first phase of MERIAM was a proof of concept. It demonstrated the value statistical modeling holds to improve early warning capacity.

The project was funded by the UK government and our partners included the Graduate Institute of Geneva, John Hopkins University, University of Maryland, and University of Minnesota.

MERIAM Part 2: (2022-2025)

MERIAM is in its current second phase of implementation. The main objective is operational testing and broadening scope: to adjust models to specific countries and then conduct pilots in these countries — currently Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan. Action Against Hunger teams will then assess the utility and added value of each model in different use cases. This will be the basis for further scaling beyond the current project.

The current phase is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and our partners include the University of Maryland and University of Minnesota.

To learn more about MERIAM, check out these following resources:

• Journal article in Food Security entitled “Empirical studies of factors associated with child malnutrition: highlight the evidence about climate and conflict shocks”
• Journal article in Global Food Security entitled “Validating Famine Early Warning Systems Network projections of food security in Africa, 2009-2020”
• Journal article in Data in Brief entitled “Visualizing trends in food security across Africa, 2009-2020: Data and animations at a grid-cell level”
• Journal article in Political Violence at a Glance entitled “Which Wars Lead to Hunger (and Which Do Not)?”
• Journal article in Lancet Planetary Health entitled “Can Considering Climate and Conflict Conditions Together Enable Timely, Targeted Food Security Interventions to Limit Child Acute Malnutrition in Fragile Settings?”
• Journal article in Spatial Demography entitled “The association between conflict and climate factors and the risk of child acute malnutrition: A comparative analysis of Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda.”
• Journal article Field Exchange entitled “Casual factors of wasting in Africa: What can be gleaned from available data?”
• Journal article in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications entitled “Household behavior and vulnerability to acute malnutrition in Kenya.”
• Journal article in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems entitled “Trajectories of resilience to acute malnutrition in the Kenyan drylands.”
• Journal article in World Development entitled “Predicting Acute Malnutrition Prevalence at a Sub-National Level as a Function of Environmental Conditions and Violent Conflict.”

Other Publications

• A progress story from South Sudan entitled “The MERIAM Initiative – Advancing predictive analytics to fight malnutrition in South Sudan.“
• An overall report entitled “MERIAM formative research to inform modelling specifications.”

For more information, please contact: meriam2.0@actionagainsthunger.org.