On April 16, The Chicago Council launched a new report, Healthy Food for a Healthy World: Leveraging Agriculture and Food to Improve Global Nutrition, at the Global Food Security Symposium 2015. Each week, we will highlight one of the report’s recommendations in a new post on the Global Food for Thought blog. This blog series will explore how the strengths and ingenuity of the agriculture and food sector can reduce the reality and risks of malnutrition globally. Watch for a new post each Wednesday, and join the discussion using #GlobalAg.  

To fight global malnutrition, nutrition must become a focal point for US development investments in agricultural development, food security, and global health. Because what is measured is often what is emphasized in programs and policies, indicators for nutrition must be included prominently as part of a comprehensive set of development indicators to ensure that nutrition is explicitly prioritized in the design of development programs.

Currently, the US government is developing a Global Nutrition Coordination Plan in order to better coordinate global nutrition investments through a multi-sectoral approach. As part of the Plan’s implementation, the US government should work to ensure all federal agencies and bureaus collect and report on the same information, include a clear accounting of nutrition spending, and are guided by a shared roadmap for ramping up collaborative, transdisciplinary research and programs to improve nutrition.

Overall, US programs should work towards achieving the global nutrition targets set in 2012 by the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization. These targets, to be reached by 2025, include:

1. 40 percent reduction in the number of children under five who are stunted
2. 50 percent reduction of anemia in women of reproductive age
3. 30 percent reduction in low birth weight
4. No increase in childhood overweight
5. Increase in the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months of life up to at least 50 percent
6. Reduce childhood wasting to less than 5 percent

 
Within the United States, many federal agencies and private foundations invest substantially in transdisciplinary research on issues like obesity, cancer, and substance addiction. Distinct from multidisciplinary research – different fields working independently on the same project – and interdisciplinary research – close coordination but distinct disciplinary models – transdisciplinary research promotes the development of new concepts, methods, and questions across disciplines through shared frameworks and integrated approaches.

The development goal of simultaneously improving productivity, profitability, nutritional outcomes, and environmental sustainability through food systems requires solutions based in transdisciplinary collaboration and thinking that involves not only researchers and subject matter experts, but the direct participations of community members and local practitioners who have insights into the most locally relevant and practical approaches.

In order to advance transdisciplinary research on global nutrition, federal agencies – including the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, USAID, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – should develop requests for research proposals and graduate-level training aimed at generating new knowledge and developing innovative solutions to food system challenges critical for improving health and nutrition. These requests for proposals should involve teams of researchers, or teams of faculty in the case of graduate training, that span disciplinary boundaries of fields like agriculture, environmental science, economics, nutrition, public health, social and behavioral science, and medicine, integrating research approaches and disciplinary frameworks to tackle food system questions that cannot be adequately answered in isolation.

References:

• Rosenfield, P. L. “The Potential of Transdisciplinary Research for Sustaining and Extending Linkages between the Health and Social Sciences.” Social Science & Medicine 35, no. 11 (1992): 1343-57.
• Stokols, Daniel. “Translating Social Ecological Theory into Guidelines for Community Health Promotion.” American Journal of Health Promotion 10, no. 4 (1996): 282-98.
• United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Background on the United States Government Global Nutrition Coordination Plan. Washington, DC: DHHS, May 2014.
• ---. “Draft Framework and Outline for the US Government Global Nutrition Coordination Plan.” Accessed May 11, 2015.
• World Health Organization (WHO). “Global Targets 2025.” Accessed March 16, 2015.
• ---. “Indicators for the Global Monitoring Network on Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition.” Geneva: WHO, November 2014.