Undernutrition is the single largest contributor to the global burden of disease and can be addressed through a number of highly efficacious interventions. Undernutrition generally has not received commensurate attention in policy agendas at global and national levels, however, and implementing these efficacious interventions at a national scale has proven difficult. This paper reports on the findings from studies in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Guatemala, Peru and Vietnam which sought to identify the challenges in the policy process and ways to overcome them, notably with respect to commitment, agenda setting, policy formulation and implementation. Data were collected through participant observation, documents and interviews. Data collection, analysis and synthesis were guided by published conceptual frameworks for understanding malnutrition, commitment, agenda setting and implementation capacities. The experiences in these countries provide several insights for future efforts: (a) high-level political attention to nutrition can be generated in a number of ways, but the generation of political commitment and system commitment requires sustained efforts from policy entrepreneurs and champions; (b) mid-level actors from ministries and external partners had great difficulty translating political windows of opportunity for nutrition into concrete operational plans, due to capacity constraints, differing professional views of undernutrition and disagreements over interventions, ownership, roles and responsibilities; and (c) the pace and quality of implementation was severely constrained in most cases by weaknesses in human and organizational capacities from national to frontline levels. These findings deepen our understanding of the factors that can influence commitment, agenda setting, policy formulation and implementation. They also confirm and extend upon the growing recognition that the heavy investment to identify efficacious nutrition interventions is unlikely to reduce the burden of undernutrition unless or until these systemic capacity constraints are addressed, with an emphasis initially on strategic and management capacities.

A growing literature highlights complexity of policy implementation and governance in global health and argues that the processes and outcomes of policies could be improved by explicitly taking this complexity into account. Yet there is a paucity of studies exploring how this can be achieved in everyday practice. This study documents the strategies, tactics, and challenges of boundary‐spanning actors working in 4 Sub‐Saharan Africa countries who supported the implementation of multisectoral nutrition as part of the African Nutrition Security Partnership in Burkina Faso, Mali, Ethiopia, and Uganda. Three action researchers were posted to these countries during the final 2 years of the project to help the government and its partners implement multisectoral nutrition and document the lessons. Prospective data were collected through participant observation, end‐line semistructured interviews, and document analysis. All 4 countries made significant progress despite a wide range of challenges at the individual, organizational, and system levels. The boundary‐spanning actors and their collaborators deployed a wide range of strategies but faced significant challenges in playing these unconventional roles. The study concludes that, under the right conditions, intentional boundary spanning can be a feasible and acceptable practice within a multisectoral, complex adaptive system in low‐ and middle‐income countries.

Objectives: Undernutrition has received significant attention at global and national levels in recent years but translating this attention into effective action at the country and district levels poses many challenges. We describe the observed national environments that support and challenge actors in moving national multisectoral nutrition policies and plans forward and how this on-going action research (AR) project seeks to strengthen strategic capacities and leadership in Burkina Faso, Mali, Ethiopia and Uganda. Methods: Participant observation and meetings with stakeholders provide insight into the enabling environment and its challenges. This AR then uses boundary-spanning tools such as shared history, practitioner profiles, PAG workshops among others to engage stakeholders in collaborative learning and to facilitate informal strategic and adaptive management approaches to nutrition policies and program implementation. Results: All four countries have developed multisectoral national nutrition policies and/or plans and created coordinating committees. Further multisectoral progress however faces challenges seen elsewhere, such as the dominance of sectoral goals and incentives, uneven understanding of multisectoral roles, responsibilities and leadership; uneven participation and ownership; uneven human and institutional capacities; lack of effective sub-national multisectoral platforms; and persistence of unaligned donor-and NGO-driven approaches. On-going work focuses on the formation of strategic alliances, leadership development, strengthening of sub-national platforms