The International Rescue Committee (IRC) announced on May 6 a new partnership with the Weiss Asset Management Foundation, which will invest nearly US $1 million to help identify and scale cost-efficiency gains in the delivery of malnutrition treatment. The initiative, called Malnutrition Optimization to Scale Treatment (MOST), will be led by IRC through the Dioptra Consortium.
Acute malnutrition impacts over 40 million children worldwide, yet fewer than one in three receive needed care. The MOST initiative aims to close this gap by strengthening the generation and use of cost evidence to inform programming decisions. This could enable more children to access lifesaving treatment as humanitarian funding becomes increasingly limited.
According to IRC, this effort seeks to improve the cost-efficiency of Dioptra Consortium’s malnutrition programming by 20 percent—a change that could allow tens of thousands more children to be treated using existing resources. The focus on evidence and value for money comes at a time when shrinking budgets are forcing organizations and donors alike to make sharper tradeoffs.
Leigh Fraiser, Managing Director at Weiss Asset Management Foundation, said, “The Weiss Asset Management Foundation funds evidence-based, cost-effective, and scalable programs that we believe deliver high risk-adjusted social returns. In a funding-constrained environment, improving cost-efficiency in malnutrition treatment is one of the most direct ways to extend lifesaving care, and Dioptra’s rigorous, real-time approach could help do so at scale. Our partnership comes at an important moment for the sector and reflects a shared commitment to ensuring that limited resources reach as many children as possible.”
MOST will support Dioptra Consortium member organizations—and the broader sector—by identifying key questions for efficiency gains in program delivery; generating comparable analyses using the Dioptra tool across contexts; modeling resource requirements based on consortium-wide data; and synthesizing cross-organization evidence into public recommendations for implementers and donors.
Paige Kirby, Senior Advisor for Best Use of Resources at IRC said: “Across sectors, Dioptra-informed analyses have caused organizations to shift delivery models, redesign interventions, and reallocate resources toward more effective approaches… NGOs are implementers embedded in communities… With the support of the WAM Foundation, Dioptra will continue to push toward a future where every dollar spent on malnutrition treatment goes further – reaching more children, saving more lives…”
The Dioptra Consortium represents major development and humanitarian organizations responsible for implementing approximately $5 billion in aid programs annually. Its members include IRC, CARE, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, Catholic Relief Services and Acción contra el Hambre.