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Nutrition surveillance – still needed..

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By Veronica Tuffrey

A review of nutrition surveillance in low-income countries has just been released by the Transform Nutrition research consortium. It describes the use and value of nutrition surveillance for a number of purposes including early warning of malnutrition, to develop and evaluate policies and programmes, and to assess progress towards international development goals for better nutrition.

Nutrition surveillance – the regular and systematic collection of data on nutritional indicators – is a subject most nutritionists perceive to be important but would rather leave others to deal with it. Why? [Read more...]

Nutrition advocacy training

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Transforming leadership

Blog by Christine Muyama and Manaan Mumma

As Transform Nutrition champions 2016, we got an opportunity to participate in the Nutrition for Growth spokespeople training held in London from 14th- 16th March 2016. The training was conducted with the aim of identifying, collecting, and utilising compelling nutrition evidence and narratives to support our Nutrition advocacy work and to maximise the opportunity of the Nutrition for Growth summit as to secure political and financial nutrition commitments from our advocacy targets. It also focused on nutrition advocacy with a special emphasis on how to galvanize public support and influence decision makers around nutrition priorities. [Read more...]

Nutrition Surveillance Systems

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Transforming leadership

A new and comprehensive review of Nutrition Surveillance Systems is now available. Its commission by Save the Children was stimulated by the growing need for data on nutrition outcomes to track changes over time and assess the progress of nations towards international development goals – such as the World Health Assembly global nutrition targets.

This review, funded by Transform Nutrition, assesses the use and value of nutrition data for a number of other purposes – including early warning of malnutrition, to guide the development of national and regional policies and programmes, and to evaluate their impact on populations.

2016 Transform Nutrition Champions announced

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After a world-wide call for nominations, Transform Nutrition are delighted to announce the 2016 Transform Nutrition Champions.

Following interviews, the stories of all 10 champions are being written up and will be available soon. We are also working with Save the Children on assessing their training needs and involving them in some of the big nutrition events taking place this year.

Our 10 champions:

  • Basanta Kumar Kar, Bangladesh/ India
  • Christine Muyama, Uganda
  • Christopher Dube, Zambia
  • Debjeet Sarangi, India
  • Frealem Shibabaw, Ethiopia
  • Manaan Mumma, Kenya
  • Neerja Chowdhury, India
  • San San Myint, Myanmar
  • V. Ramani, India
  • William Chilufya, Zambia

 

Transforming Nutrition; Ideas, Policies and Outcomes 2016

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Transforming leadership

11 – 15 July 2016 –  Institute of Development Studies, UK

This 5 day course Transforming Nutrition; Ideas, Policies and Outcomes 2016  is designed for both policy makers and practitioners. The course will lead participants through new ways of thinking about undernutrition and what to do about it and provide a base from which they can develop their own future leadership for transformational change.

Applications are invited now for this popular course. Deadline 10 March 2016.

Transform Nutrition leaders network launched

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Transforming leadership

The Transform Nutrition leaders network was launched at an event Delhi in December. The audience included Transforming Nutrition short course cohort from 2012 to 2015, nutrition researchers and nutrition champions.  The overall theme was ‘ Cross sectoral communication within nutrition and building on the strengths of networks’. [Read more...]

Application deadline is almost here!  Short Course on Transforming Nutrition in India

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Transforming leadership

Transforming Nutrition in India: Ideas, Policies and Outcomes 7-11 December 2015

 Shweta Khandelwal and Purnima Menon

Course Directors: Prof. Lawrence Haddad (IFPRI-UK), Prof. Aryeh Stein (Emory University), Dr. Purnima Menon (IFPRI-India) and Dr. Shweta Khandelwal(PHFI)

The context: Facing simultaneous demographic, health and nutrition transitions alongside continuing poverty, deprivation, gender inequities and food insecurity, India faces a tremendous burden of malnutrition. On the one hand, India has the highest number of undernourished children, while on the other, overweight, obesity and non-communicable diseases are rapidly escalating, and micronutrient deficiencies remain stubbornly high.  This triple burden of malnutrition is often inextricably linked biologically, socially and policy responses to the overall burden of malnutrition need to come together and evolve together to ensure that India’s health, as a nation, is strengthened.

The capacity challenge:  At the same time, the strategic capacity to understand, interpret and manage this truly overwhelming burden of poor nutrition in countries like India is limited. This, in turn, can hamper India’s ability to tackle existing and emerging nutrition-related problems. In the context of this landscape of challenges, but an increasing political and economic awareness of the importance of good nutrition for development, the Centre for Chronic Disease Control (CCDC) and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), together with international academic partners, aim to strengthen the ability of the Indian nutrition policy, technical and academic community to understand and mitigate this challenge through the development of various forms of public engagement and training.

The course:  One method of strengthening strategic capacity for nutrition actions is through training and network-building.  PHFI’s response to this is our short course on nutrition, in partnership with Transform Nutrition, a global research partnership that PHFI is proud to be a part of. The short course “Transforming Nutrition in India: Ideas, Policies and Outcomes” will be held from 7th-11th Dec 2015 in Gurgaon, Haryana, not far from New Delhi.  This five-day course, initially developed for global nutrition practitioners and decision-makers, and already popular internationally, has now been tailored to be specific to India.  In the course, we discuss the state of nutrition in India, links between nutrition and other determinants of health, the role of different types of interventions, challenges to scaling up and converging interventions, and thinking and acting multisectorally.   A key feature of the course is to embrace the political economy of nutrition and discuss what it means to move nutrition up the political agenda, to understand and advocate for increased financing for improving nutrition.

Course faculty: Dr. Shweta Khandelwal, who has invested years of her career in understanding and mapping nutrition capacity challenges in India is the course convenor and coordinator. Faculty who support this course, through lectures, direct and intense engagements with participants, and as a continued resource even after the course ends, consist of Indian and international leaders in the area of public health nutrition research and policy. Core faculty include Professor Lawrence Haddad, Professor Aryeh Stein, Professor Reynaldo Martorell, Professor Srinath Reddy, Professor D. Prabhakaran, Professor Ramanan Laxminarayan, Dr Purnima Menon and others.

Who will benefit from this course?  Applications are invited especially from early- to mid-career candidates who are either considering working in the nutrition policy and program areas or are already working on strengthening nutrition actions in public sector, private sector or civil society organizations.  It is best suited to generalists who need to dive into and understand the state of play of nutrition in India, career nutritionists who want to “catch up”.

The course fee is INR 7500 for 5 days, not inclusive of travel, accommodation or transportation charges you might incur to attend. Meals are provided during the course. The final date for applications is 10 November, 2015.  Seats are filling up!

Email us at nutrisem2015@gmail.com  or visit www.phfi.org  for further details on the course and registration information.

 

 

Amharic research briefing on Reducing Child Undernutrition

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Transforming leadership

The  Transform Nutrition research brief Reducing Child Undernutrition: Past Drivers and Priorities for the Post-MDG Era, is now available in Amharic. This briefing summarises a paper by Lisa Smith and Lawrence Haddad which used data from 1970-2012 for 116 countries to investigate the factors that have contributed to past reductions in child undernutrition and identify priorities for the future.