The National Nutrition Programme was first introduced in 1984 as part of the five-year Joint Nutrition Support Programme (JNSP) - a project to reduce malnutrition in pregnant women, infants and children and to strengthen maternal and child health services over the period 1984 – 1989.

This project was funded by the Government of Italy with technical assistance from the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute/PAHO/WHO and was successful in reducing childhood malnutrition from 25% to 12%.

When the JNSP project closed in 1989 the Nutrition Unit, inclusive of technical food service staff based at the then Kingstown General Hospital, was established as a health programme financed by the Government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Since then the global nutrition transition and subsequent proliferation of nutrition-related chronic non-communicable diseases have expanded the mandate and objectives of the Unit to encompass other population groups with a shift in focus from under nutrition to over nutrition and its health effects.