PASTI: Health and Nutrition: Reducing Childhood Stunting

Context

The United States and Indonesia are leveraging government investments with the private sector 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 21.5 percent in 2023 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, lost productivity, and various health problems. Several challenges remain to lowering the stunting rate to 14 percent. These challenges include significant 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)

In 2023, USAID partnered with Tanoto Foundation, PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara, Yayasan Bakti Barito, and PT Bank Central Asia Tbk to launch PASTI, a four-year activity to reduce stunting in four provinces: Banten, East Java, East Nusa Tenggara, and West Kalimantan. PASTI is designed to be adaptive to additional priority areas based on interest from other potential corporate partners. Building on the initial success of this program, PASTI received support from PT Freeport Indonesia to expand the activity to Central Papua and South Papua in 2024. The total funding from USAID and all private sector partners for this activity is $12.5 million.

PASTI is advancing the Government of Indonesia (GOI) commitment to implement a national action plan to address malnutrition by: improving feeding practices for families during the first 1,000 days, improving nutrition practices among the most vulnerable adolescents and premarital couples, bolstering institutional capacity and collaborative governance, and strengthening integrated primary health care.

Results

Facilitated the creation of 85 community-based nutrition rehabilitation centers (Pos Gizi) in eight districts, reaching over 900 children under the age of two; 70 percent of participants showed improved weight gain within ten days.
Supported more than 44,000 adolescent girls to consume iron or folic acid supplements to prevent anemia.
Trained over 1,000 members of stunting reduction working groups across eight districts on data management, monitoring, planning, and budgeting.
Improved access and quality of community-based health and nutrition services, for at-risk families through community empowerment efforts, including in hard-to-reach areas.
Enhanced coordination between ministries, agencies, and communities to accelerate stunting reduction at the district and village levels by developing an integrated monitoring and evaluation system.
Improved the quality of Primary Health Care services by strengthening integrated and comprehensive primary health services for mothers and children, focusing on promotion and prevention.