Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies (IYCF-E) Assessment Guide

Infant and young child feeding (IYCF) is critical in humanitarian contexts. Recommended IYCF practices can prevent undernutrition, reduce disease burden and save lives. However, emergencies disrupt breastfeeding, complementary feeding, and care practices — putting children at heightened risk. Conducting timely and reliable IYCF assessments is essential for designing effective interventions and making informed decisions to protect and support the nutrition and health of infants and young children.

FHI 360, with the support of Action Against Hunger UK, led the development of an Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies (IYCF-E) Assessment Guide, the purpose of which is to provide a standardized methodology for collecting, analyzing and interpreting IYCF data in emergencies. This will enable better decision-making during emergency preparedness and response in humanitarian and fragile contexts. The guide aims to streamline the IYCF-E assessment process by offering an easy-to-use, step-by-step approach to support humanitarian responders to better understand the situation and needs of infants and young children and their caregivers.

This page also includes the following:

• IYCF-E Assessment Guide Orientation Deck: This presentation gives a high-level overview of the IYCF-E Assessment Guide and shares six modules for how to use the guide. With basic exercise and quizzes, this slide deck can be used as stand-alone training material or integrated with existing assessment trainings.
• Annex 1: Analysis Worksheet of the IYCF-E Assessment Guide: This worksheet provides users with a simple yet comprehensive tool to consolidate available IYCF-E data into a single format and analyze the data in a coherent and systematic way.
• Annex 2: Sample Size Calculator of the IYCF-E Assessment Guide: This Excel tool helps users estimate sample-size requirements for stand-alone or nested surveys for IYCF-E assessment. The calculator asks for parameters and generates information, such as sample-size requirements by IYCF indicator.