Three questions to William Moore, Chief Executive Officer of the Eleanor Crook Foundation

Interview with William Moore, Executive Director of the Eleanor Crook Foundation

Focus 2030 :  As a foundation with a singular focus on eradicating global malnutrition, what are the most cost-effective solutions you support in combating malnutrition? Are these solutions adequately scaled and accessible to the populations in greatest need? What steps can the international community take to further scale and expand these efforts?

William Moore, Executive Director of the Eleanor Crook Foundation : Each day around the world, thousands of children die of malnutrition. Malnutrition remains the number one killer of kids each year – it’s responsible for nearly half of all child deaths worldwide. For those who survive, malnutrition in the early years permanently stunts a child’s physical and cognitive development, wasting potential that the world desperately needs.

It is hard to overstate the severity of the crisis. But, in a world full of severe, intractable crises, the thing that offers me hope is that in the case of malnutrition, there are solutions.

We have decades of evidence that have given the world a roadmap to scale cost-effective, relatively simple health interventions that could effectively eradicate severe malnutrition.

These are solutions like high-quality prenatal vitamins for women during pregnancy; support for a woman to breastfeed; supplementation with Vitamin A in early childhood; and treatment for severe malnutrition with a peanut-based therapeutic food known as Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food – or Plumpy’nut. Plumpy’nut was invented in France in the 1990s by a French pediatric nutritionist named André Briend.

Johns Hopkins University estimates that bringing just those four interventions to scale in nine high burden countries could save 1.2 million lives over a five-year period, costing just about $1500 per life saved.

Right now, these best buys in global health and development are reaching very few of the women and kids around the world who need them most. There are many complex reasons for this unfortunate reality, but like many of the world’s big problems, it boils down to awareness, leadership, focus, and money.

The international community must come together to increase sustainable funding for these cost-effective solutions. We also must advance policy reforms in national policies and global frameworks – and we have to continue to push for policy reforms. Finally, the international community must support country-led solutions. At the Eleanor Crook Foundation (ECF), we have partnered with the governments of Ghana, Senegal, and Nepal to scale malnutrition solutions that save lives.

Focus 2030 :  In your view, how can we increase funding for malnutrition initiatives? What initiatives, mechanisms or partnerships should be strengthened or developed to enhance global investment in nutrition?

William Moore  : Malnutrition remains one of the most pressing global health challenges – and yet investments in high-impact, cost-effective solutions lag behind other development priorities.

Governments, NGOs, and philanthropies must work collaboratively to ensure that nutrition-specific solutions are prioritized. Rather than diluting nutrition in a broader development agenda, we should be looking at the highest impact, most cost-effective solutions that are proven to reduce rates of malnutrition and save lives now.

For example, an investment of $1.1 billion over the next five years in a superior prenatal vitamin known as Multiple Micronutrient Supplements (MMS) could save over half a million lives, improve birth outcomes for more than five million babies, and prevent anemia – a largely hidden public health crisis – in over 15 million pregnant women. In some contexts, introducing MMS is among the very cheapest ways to save a life. Prenatal multivitamins like MMS have been recognized as one of the best buys in global health. And yet despite all we know about how important good nutrition is during pregnancy for both a mother and her baby, maternal nutrition – and MMS – have been overlooked and underfunded.

Additionally, targeted programs that treat children suffering from acute malnutrition should be on the top of every development agenda. We know that investing in solutions like these save lives; in fact, the New York Times that increased funding for Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food led to a 73% increase in coverage rates in 2023, for a total of 1.2 million children’s lives saved.

Initiatives like the Child Nutrition Fund serve as a structured co-financing mechanism aimed at catalyzing funding for MMS and other essential nutrition solutions. Through this funding mechanism, governments have the opportunity to double their investments in scalable nutrition interventions like MMS and RUTF, leveraging donor contributions to increase coverage and save more lives.

Focus 2030 : The next N4G Summit will be hosted by France in Paris on March 27-28. How can the international community leverage this momentum to drive meaningful action at the upcoming Summit? What role will the Eleanor Crook Foundation play in advancing these efforts?

William Moore  : The Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in Paris presents a critical opportunity for the international community to drive collective action in addressing malnutrition. And at N4G, we urge other public and private donors to join the Eleanor Crook Foundation and commit to re-focusing their resources to scale up the most proven, cost-effective solutions.

At a time when resources are scarce, we must focus our efforts on the solutions that are the most cost-effective and proven.

To scale up life-saving solutions like prenatal multivitamins, it’s essential that governments and donors join philanthropies in making investments that will tackle this pervasive and solvable global problem. At the summit, Eleanor Crook Foundation will be making an important announcement of a catalytic contribution towards this effort.

It is worth nothing that malnutrition is one of humankind’s oldest and most pervasive problems. We’re living in the year 2025; we’re a quarter of the way through the 21st century. There are technological advancements that our grandparents never dreamed we’d have. And yet we still haven’t solved this problem, even when we have the tools and solutions to address it. Around the world, millions of children are dying of a preventable cause. This should concern us all – both because it is a great tragedy, and because it impacts global stability, peace, and migration. As long as thousands of children die from malnutrition each day, we will never have a peaceful world.

NB : The opinions expressed in this interview do not necessarily reflect the positions of Focus 2030.