The NNP was the largest nutritional initiative of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) of the Government of Bangladesh to reduce malnutrition in children, adolescents and women. The overall objective of NNP was to achieve sustainable improvements in birth weights and in nutritional status of vulnerable groups through adoption of new behaviors; and through appropriate use of nutrition services that are increasingly managed by local communities. The community-based component aims to improve service delivery and it requires pilot-testing and the identification of means to improve its operations according to scientifically sound and rigorous methods. NNP needed to have a baseline survey of the population on various socio-economic and nutritional indicators in the intervention and control upazilas to be able to evaluate the impacts of NNP inputs.

The collected national level baseline data on nutritional status of under-2 children, adolescent girls, and pregnant women and their household socio-economic condition of statistically valid samples from 44 new NNP upazilas, 12 control upazilas, and 53 old upazilas in the six divisions of Bangladesh. The total sample of the survey of about 26,000 subjects comprised about 10,500 under-2 children, 5,000 adolescent girls aged 13-19, 5,000 pregnant women, and 5,500 newborns.

The survey was commissioned by the icddr,b in-collaboration with IPHN and NIPORT, and funded jointly by CIDA and World Bank