PASTI: Health and Nutrition: Reducing Childhood Stunting

Context

The United States and Indonesia are working together with the private sector to pool resources and implement evidence-based best practices to accelerate stunting reduction and enhance the quality of primary health care.

Indonesia has made excellent progress to reduce childhood stunting over the past 10 years, bringing the rate down to 21.6 percent in 2022 from 37.2 percent in 2013. One of the primary causes of childhood stunting is inadequate nutrition during pregnancy and early childhood. Stunting in a child’s early years can lead to poor cognition and educational performance, low adult wages, and lost productivity, in addition to health problems. There are a variety of challenges to lowering the stunting rate to 14 percent, including the large variation in stunting rates among districts, lack of support for families to practice appropriate feeding, and gaps in the capacity of Community Health Volunteers and Family Support Teams to detect malnourishment early and provide necessary follow up.

Partnership to Accelerate Stunting Reduction in Indonesia (PASTI)

USAID, in partnership with Tanoto Foundation, PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara, Yayasan Bakti Barito, and PT Bank Central Asia Tbk, is funding PASTI, a four-year, $8.5 million activity implemented by Wahana Visi Indonesia (WVI). PASTI is designed to be adaptive to additional priority areas based on interest from other potential corporate partners. PASTI is advancing the Government of Indonesia (GoI) commitment to implement a national action plan to address malnutrition. Our partnership will help Indonesia reduce stunting by improving feeding practices for families during the first 1,000 days (pregnant or lactating mothers and children under two); improving nutrition practices among the most vulnerable adolescents and premarital couples; bolstering institutional capacity and collaborative governance among stakeholders; and strengthening facility- and community-based primary health care.

Geographical Area

PASTI provides technical assistance to the GoI to achieve its stunting reduction goal in selected geographical areas. Based on consultation with the GoI, PASTI will work in five provinces: Banten, East Java, East Nusa Tenggara, West Kalimantan, and West Nusa Tenggara. Selection criteria include: the number and prevalence of children with stunting and wasting, the absolute number of children affected, low progress in reducing stunting, avoiding overlap with other similar programs/initiatives, and strong presence of implementing partners.

Anticipated Results

Increased knowledge and understanding of the community about the importance of quality health and nutrition services through Behavior Change Communication that is adaptive to the local context.
Increased access (coverage) and quality of community-based health and nutrition services, and a referral process for families at risk through local context-based community empowerment efforts, including in hard-to-reach areas.
Strengthened roles and skills of youth in reproductive healt campaigns and stunting prevention.
Build the capacity of faith-based organizations with Tim Pendamping Keluarga (TPK) or community cadres to provide intensive assistance to premarital and couples.
Improve multi-stakeholder coordination and collaboration and community involvement in efforts to accelerate stunting reduction in the regions by developing an integrated monitoring and evaluation system.