The Chicago Council’s campaign, “Healthy Food for a Healthy World,” builds awareness about the important role food can play in promoting health and alleviating malnutrition. We publish a blog post weekly exploring these issues and the series will culminate in the release of a new Chicago Council report at the Global Food Security Symposium 2015 on April 16. Look for a new post each Wednesday, join the discussion using #GlobalAg, and tune in to the Symposium live steam on April 16.

By Louise Iverson, Research Associate, Global Agriculture & Food, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Although we live in the information age, data on global malnutrition remain woefully limited. At the national and international level, nutrition is typically defined and monitored based on rates of obesity and childhood stunting and wasting. Yet nearly 100 countries, many of which suffer from the most acute rates of malnutrition, do not have sufficient nutrition data. Since you can't change what you don't measure, nutrition needs a data revolution in order to make headway in the fight against malnutrition. Fortunately, efforts are underway to help countries build and improve their national nutrition data, and new technologies offer inexpensive ways to collect, assess, and leverage data in order to ensure that nutrition is improving worldwide.

There already is international consensus on how to track nutrition, with agreement on global nutrition targets. In 2012 the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, endorsed six global nutrition targets to be reached by 2025:

1) 40% reduction of the global number of children under five who are stunted
2) 50% reduction of anemia in women of reproductive age
3) 30% reduction of low birth weight
4) No increase in childhood overweight and obesity rates
5) Increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months up to at least 50%
6) Reduce childhood wasting to less than 5% Efforts are underway to change this dynamic. The Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Network is helping its 54 member countries create national nutrition information systems. In Rwanda, for example, district mayors collaborated to develop the District Plan to Eliminate Malnutrition, a multi-sectoral program that tracks major nutrition indicators and generates quarterly progress reports. In 2013, Zimbabwe launched a new Food and Nutrition Security Policy, which includes a national integrated food and nutrition security information system. Their system incorporates data from a demographic and health survey conducted every five years, a national nutrition surveillance system, quarterly data from agriculture and food security monitoring systems, and other national and regional sources.

Global initiatives are also striving to make existing data available to governments and other stakeholders. The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative supports international efforts to make agricultural and nutritional data available, accessible, and usable worldwide, particularly for high level policy and institutional settings. Launched in 2013, GODAN’s 118 partners include NGOs, private sector stakeholders, and national governments, including the United States and the United Kingdom, among others. Numerous projects currently draw on GODAN data: Cassavabase is an open access database from Cornell University’s Nextgen Cassava Project that makes data from cassava breeding programs around the world freely available to breeders, reducing the time it takes to bring new cassava varieties into farmers’ fields. The Plantwise Knowledge Bank serves as a repository of information for treating crop pests and diseases for Plantwise’s community-based plant clinics, and both draws from and contributes to GODAN’s data network. Extension services and NGOs working with farmers can utilize Knowledge Bank data to better support farmers’ production and in turn, their livelihoods and ability to consume and purchase nutritious foods.

At the local level, information and communication technologies such as mobile phones offers ways to collect data and disseminate information that were previously impossible. The mNutrition initiative is working to improve diet and encourage healthier eating in 14 countries by sending nutrition messages through existing agriculture and health mobile phone platforms. In South Africa, where 85 percent of people have access to a cell phone, an mNutrition program called StartSmart provides new mothers with information about good nutrition during the 1,000 days period through their phone.

Mobile technology is also working to collect nutrition data more effectively. In Malawi, where 52 percent of children suffer from stunting, UNICEF developed a program to use mobile technology in order to improve national surveillance of child nutrition. Through a RapidSMS platform, health workers submit data such as children’s height, weight, and arm circumference via text message to a national surveillance system, and receive a message with instructions for care if the data show signs of malnourishment. The data and resulting analysis are also made available on a national website to the Malawian government and other stakeholders. As a result of the mobile system in Malawi, data quality has improved, data transmission takes place more quickly, and child nutrition monitoring has become more efficient. Given that mobile phone use is pervasive and growing in developing countries, collecting and providing nutrition information via mobile technology can help close that data gaps in global nutrition and encourage nutritious diets.

The more data that are available, the better we can track, measure, and improve global nutrition around the world.

References:

• Barnett, Inka, et al. “Designing a Mixed-Method Impact Evaluation for a Mobile Phone Application for Nutrition Service Delivery in Indonesia.” IDS Evidence Report No. 79: Reducing Hunger and Undernutrition. Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, June 2014.
• Berg, Matt, James Wariero, and Vijay Modi. Every Child Counts- the Use of SMS in Kenya to Support the Community Based Management of Acute Malnutrition and Malaria in Children Under Five. New York: Columbia University, 2009.
• Blaschke, Sean, et al. Using Mobile Phones to Improve Child Nutrition Surveillance in Malawi. New York: UNICEF Malawi and UNICEF Innovations, 2009.
• Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN). “What is GODAN.” Accessed March 16, 2015.
• International Food Policy Research Institute. Global Nutrition Report 2014: Actions and Accountability to Accelerate the World’s Progress on Nutrition. Washington, DC: IFPRI, 2014.
• Scaling Up Nutrition. “Information Systems for Nutrition.” Scaling Up Nutrition in Practice Briefing Series, April 2014.
• van Vark, Caspar. “How might open data in agriculture help achieve food security?” The Guardian, November 25, 2013.
• Wakefield, Fancesca. “mNutrition- how mobile phones are improving nutrition.” The Guardian, October 27, 2014.
• 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.
• ---. mHealth: New horizons for health through mobile technologies. Global Observatory for eHealth series – Volume 3. Geneva: WHO, 2011.
   

Read previous posts in the Healthy Food for a Healthy World blog series: 

Hungry Cities on the Rise

Women as the Force for Improving Global Nutrition

Wasted Food, Wasted Nutrients

Food as Medicine—The Link Between Nutrition and Health

The $2 Trillion Market for Fruits and Vegetables

Economic Costs of Global Malnutrition