New York, NY
Remarks
Together for Nutrition: Nutrition for Growth 2025 UN General Assembly Side Event
GLOBAL HEALTH ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR ATUL GAWANDE: For those of you who don't know how amazing it was to have Ons Jabeur here–this is the first African to have made a Grand Slam final. She has made the Wimbledon final twice, and the U.S. Open twice, and you all have to cheer for her to win her next final.
I'm Atul Gawande, and I lead global health efforts at USAID. I’d like to begin by sharing a personal story about how malnutrition affected my own family. My parents are from India. My father grew up in a small rural village, where my grandfather inherited land that was deeply in debt. In order to pay off that debt, every cow was taken, except one. He lost half the land in order to pay off that debt. He and his new wife starved that first season. The rains did not come, and he described subsisting on bread and salt for the next three months. They barely survived. My father would turn out to be a doctor, come to the United States, and I'd be born in the United States. When I returned home to our village, I would tower a foot higher than everybody in the village due to stunting and malnutrition being that pervasive.
Today, India is both a farming and food exporter, and that transformation was partly due to USAID, where I now work, which helps bring food to a much wider part of the world. I am a beneficiary of the work we have done in nutrition and food security.
So I'm extremely excited to be here today to say a few things. Knowing she's about to come up and stop me very shortly–let me just say a fundamental part of our goal to improve global life expectancy is our mission for nutrition.
Most recently, in the lead-up to the 2021 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit, USAID Administrator Samantha Power made a historic financial commitment that redefined what’s possible: The U.S. government pledged to invest up to $11 billion over three years to combat global malnutrition. As part of this extraordinary commitment, U.S. support ultimately reached $12 billion. I am thrilled to announce that the U.S. government has exceeded that bold pledge by nearly $1 billion as we approach the next N4G Summit.
As part of this investment, USAID nutrition programs have reached more than 39 million children and women with essential, often life saving, interventions every single year.
The Biden-Harris Administration made another landmark move by signing the Global Malnutrition Prevention and Treatment Act, which focuses USAID’s efforts on strengthening nutrition through primary health care systems. By leveraging primary health care, we can identify and assess the children most in need, addressing not only stunting but also acute malnutrition. This allows us to direct the right resources to the right people at the community level, preventing and treating child wasting, ensuring adequate vitamin A coverage, improving prenatal micronutrient supplements for pregnant women, and expanding access to skilled breastfeeding counseling.
As we set our sights on March 2025 for the next Nutrition for Growth Summit, we find ourselves in an election period, which means we’re not yet in a position to make an early commitment. However, let’s challenge ourselves to once again redefine what’s possible. The United States has been deeply committed to this cause, and we will continue to uphold that strong commitment moving forward.
I’d like to take a moment to thank the governments of France and Japan for their exceptional leadership and commitment. Their contributions remind us that this is a bold, collective effort, and it's through their dedicated collaboration—along with ours—that we will drive meaningful change. I also want to extend my gratitude to UNICEF, Executive Director Kathy Russell, and the Stronger Foundations for Nutrition team for organizing this event and being instrumental in bringing us together. I urge every government and organization in this room to rise to the occasion. Together, we can replicate the success we saw in 2021 and raise the bar even higher. Thank you.