Cross-Sector Collaboration Deemed Key to Supporting Nutrition and Preventive Health Programmes in Indonesia

Strengthening cross-sector collaboration is considered a key factor in supporting nutrition improvement and preventive health programmes in Indonesia. This emerged during the launch of a new health report by the EU-ASEAN Business Council (EU-ABC) in Jakarta. The forum brought together government representatives, academics, health workers, and business actors to discuss efforts to support the national health agenda, including the implementation of the Free Nutritious Meals Programme (MBG), reducing stunting rates, and strengthening preventive health services. EU-ASEAN Business Council Executive Director Chris Humphrey assessed that the various programmes run by the government demonstrate a commitment to improving the quality of public health. According to him, the next challenge is ensuring effective programme implementation through collaboration between various parties. ‘Indonesia’s efforts to improve public nutrition and health, from large-scale initiatives like the Free Nutritious Meals programme to various stunting reduction efforts, show that the priorities set are on the right track. The main challenge now is ensuring the implementation of these various programmes can run effectively on a broad scale. As Indonesia takes steps in running various ambitious nutrition initiatives such as MBG, multi-party collaboration will be key to translating policy ambitions into measurable results. Collaboration between the government, the industrial sector, academia, and civil society can help strengthen nutritional resilience, improve public health, and build long-term economic resilience,’ said Chris on Friday, 3 July 2026. The report, titled Health, Nutrition & Lifestyle: Boosting ASEAN’s Health and Economic Resilience Through a Life-Course Framework, highlights the importance of a life-course approach in building public health from early childhood to old age. In the report, nutritional resilience, the adoption of a healthy lifestyle, and the strengthening of preventive health services are cited as three aspects that can support the improvement of human resource quality. Meanwhile, the Directorate of Non-Communicable Disease Prevention and Control (P2PTM) of the Ministry of Health assessed that collaboration among various stakeholders remains an important part of supporting the achievement of national health targets.