Compact2025 News in Brief: November 26, 2019

To accelerate progress to end hunger and undernutrition around the world, the News in Brief informs partners on emerging research and innovation, developments in global, regional, and national policies and programs, and timely news and events. Please feel free to share any feedback at IFPRI-Compact2025@cgiar.org. Find the latest developments in Compact2025 here.

Guidance notes from the National Information Platforms for Nutrition

The National Information Platforms for Nutrition (NIPN) Global Support Facility has developed a set of guidance notes to help countries adapt and apply the NIPN approach in formulating nutrition policy questions, managing and analyzing data, and communicating and disseminating findings.

Lessons from a life in food policy

Outgoing IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan reflects in a Global Food Policy article on the promise of food policy to change human lives. He shares experiences from his time at IFPRI and lessons learned about how to best exploit the promise of food policy to eradicate hunger and ensure food and nutrition security for all while protecting the environment and planet.

Gender equality in rural Africa: From commitments to outcomes

The 2019 Annual Trends and Outlook Report from ReSAKSS applies a gender lens to key issues that must be addressed to fully achieve the Malabo Declaration goals for inclusive agricultural growth. Its fourteen chapters examine the intersections between gender and (1) the context and institutions within which rural people operate; (2) the natural resources that men and women depend on for agriculture, sources of vulnerability, and resilience to shocks; (3) assets and income; and (4) livelihood strategies and well-being. Learn more about the report topic in this video and a series of blog posts.

Significant long-term effects of integrated agricultural-nutrition programs

A study in Economics & Human Biology examines the post-program effects and spillovers of the Enhanced Homestead Food Production program implemented by Helen Keller International in Burkina Faso. The findings reveal that successes during the program period could not be sustained but impacts on agricultural production, nutrition knowledge, health care practices, and severe anemia three years after the program were significant.

The double burden of malnutrition in rural Kenya

The coexistence of overweight/obesity and undernutrition is often referred to as the double burden of malnutrition. In a BMC Public Health paper, researchers use data from Kenya to show that dual-burden of malnutrition problems are observed for a significant share of households and individuals in rural Africa though prevalence rates depend on how the double burden is defined and measured.

Women’s empowerment and nutrition status in India

A study in Food Policy in Maharashtra, India, finds that women’s iron status improves with higher empowerment levels in agriculture, suggesting that non-dietary pathways can potentially address micronutrient outcomes for women.

Food access deficiencies and nutrition interventions

Reviewing data from rural households in Africa South of the Sahara, a study in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems aims to identify household level food access deficiencies and understand the associations with rural livelihoods and food sourcing behavior throughout the year. The results show several implications for the development of nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions: they should be tailored to agro-ecological zone, household composition, scale of operation and production mix. Furthermore, increasing income will not necessarily result in improved diet diversity or healthy dietary choices.

Super Girl comics capture attention for nutrition messages

The Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) has created comic books to teach adolescents about nutrition in Ethiopia and Tanzania. As part of their Agriculture to Nutrition (ATONU) initiative, the ATONU Super Girl Adventures cover themes ranging from dietary diversity to homestead food production and women’s empowerment.

WFP's progress towards Zero Hunger by 2030

Beyond the Annual Performance Report 2018 Snapshot Series examines progress toward Zero Hunger by 2030 in six of the World Food Program’s most prominent initiatives: school feeding, nutrition, aviation, capacity strengthening, smallholder farmers, and the humanitarian-development nexus. The series shares lessons learned and outlines priorities for the coming years.

End stunting in Ethiopia: National Nutrition Conference

Despite progress, many children in Ethiopia remain stunted, diverse diets continue to pose a challenge, and food systems change rapidly. To support the implementation of Ethiopia’s National Food and Nutrition Policy, IFPRI, the Policy Studies Institute, Ethiopia Public Health Institute, and the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health will present new research results on diets, affordability, and policy at the National Nutrition Conference in Addis Ababa on December 12.

Webinar on innovative research design to improve micronutrient supplementation

On December 4, the Society for Implementation Science in Nutrition will host a webinar on “Improving Iron and Folic Acid Supplementation Through Quality Improvement: An Effectiveness-implementation Hybrid Study Type III.” The webinar will (1) introduce the effectiveness-implementation hybrid design; (2) describe the quality improvement approach and implementation strategies used to support the delivery of the intervention; and (3) present preliminary findings from the baseline data collection.

Call for grant applications on innovative methods and metrics

The Innovative Methods and Metrics for Agriculture and Nutrition Actions (IMMANA) program has released a call for applications for competitive research grants—concept memos are due December 15. The grants are aimed at accelerating the development of innovative and interdisciplinary methods, metrics, and tools to advance the scientific understanding of the linkages between agriculture and food systems and health and nutrition outcomes to better inform related policy and programmatic actions in low and middle-income countries.

Highlights from this and past Compact2025 News in Briefs, along with other key resources, can be found at the Compact2025 Knowledge & Innovation Hub resources page.

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