The Program in International Nutrition at Cornell University - Issue #24
Dear all,
We hope you are well. Please find below this week’s updates in and around the Program in International Nutrition. Thank you.
Best wishes,
Nidhi and Saurabh
PIN Podcasts
Catch up on all the episodes below: — pin.transistor.fm The Program in International Nutrition from Cornell University interviews leaders and rising stars in the field of nutrition and public health.
PIN Podcast | PIN 22 - Md. Munirul Islam — share.transistor.fm
Dr. Md. Munirul Islam joins the PIN Podcast to tell us about his work as Scientist, Nutrition and Clinical Services Division at International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) and Senior Consultant Physician at Dhaka Hospital.
Catch up on all of our episodes here.
Spring 2022 Seminar Series
We had an amazing line-up of speakers in the Spring 2022 PIN Seminar series. Catch up on all previous seminars through the PIN channel on Cornell Video On Demand.
Shweta Khandelwal, PhD, MSc - “Public health nutrition in India: Policy implications and way forward”
Corinna Hawkes, PhD - “Addressing dietary inequalities: what will work? A people-centred, systems-based guide to support the design of efficient and equitable policies”
Rolf Klemm, MPH, DrPH - “Finding the ‘gold’ in Golden Rice: Design considerations and challenges in evaluating the nutritional impact of Golden Rice”
Vani Sethi, PhD - “Developing and testing standardized algorithms for delivering antenatal nutrition services through routine health systems, in India”
María Nieves García-Casal, PhD - “Project for a comprehensive reevaluation of WHO haemoglobin cut-offs used to define anaemia”
Md. Munirul Islam, MBBS, PhD - “Zinc Deficiency: In Search of Meaningful Management Strategies”
Shibani Ghosh, PhD - “Nutrition, Agriculture, Health, Food Systems: Evidence and approaches in addressing maternal and infant nutrition”
Jennifer Friedman, MD, PhD - “Treatment of children and pregnant women for schistosomiasis: using evidence to drive policy change”
Reina Engle-Stone, PhD - “Addressing micronutrient deficiencies in West Africa through fortified bouillon”
PIN #DYK
Other Seminars and Events of Interest
The Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition presents the Analytics & Metrics Community of Practice | LSHTM — www.lshtm.ac.uk
The Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition and its Analytics & Metrics Community of Practice (CoP) is hosting their first virtual seminar, inviting interested researchers, policy makers and practitioners to learn more about existing research studies and evidence in school health and nutrition, hear reflections of high-level decision makers on the use of evidence to influence policy discussions, and to engage in discussions with the speakers and participants.
May 30, 2022, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST | Join here
Population-Based Survey Data Use for Improved Nutrition Policies and Programs - USAID Advancing Nutrition — www.advancingnutrition.org
Effective nutrition programs require accurate and reliable data to inform progress. Tracking nutrition indicators is integral to the success of data-informed decisions for nutrition programs and policies. Population-based survey data is particularly useful in allowing nutrition program implementers to carefully target the indicators they want to address for intervention success.
MAY 18, 2022, 9:00 - 10:00 AM EST | Register here
Changing How We Eat | One Planet network — www.oneplanetnetwork.org
Stockholm +50 comes less than a year after the UN Food Systems Summit, which generated unprecedented awareness on the need to adopt sustainable food systems approaches. The summit led to over 100 countries developing National Pathways for food systems transformation. This event provides a concrete opportunity to continue the amplification of sustainable food systems, and push to integrate them into the UNCCD, UNCBD and UNFCCC Conferences of Parties negotiations and outcomes. Appetites for Change offers space to highlight champion countries, cities, and communities that have implemented critical system-based solutions. With experts, these sessions will advance our understanding of how we may contribute to sustainable food systems that deliver human and planetary prosperity.
June 1, 2022, 4:30 AM - 5:30 PM EST | Register here
May 18, 2022 , 09:00 - 10:30 AM (EST)
7th Annual Agriculture, Nutrition and Health (ANH) Academy Week - Global Nutrition Report — globalnutritionreport.org
The ANH Academy Week is a series of annual events that bring together the community of researchers, practitioners and policymakers working at the intersection of agriculture, food systems, nutrition and health. The objective of the ANH Academy Week is to foster knowledge exchange, innovation and learning around interdisciplinary ANH research.
June 20 - 30 | Register here
Third International Symposium: Nutritional health in early childhood, beyond biological determinant factors — live.eventtia.com
This event takes place within the celebration of the World Day of Human Milk Donation and the promotion of breastfeeding in Colombia. The symposium, in its different versions, makes visible the main advances in research on human lactation, healthy eating, micronutrient supplementation, as well as the prevention of stunting and overweight in children under 5 years of age.
May 24 - 26, 2022 | Register here
Child alert: Severe wasting | UNICEF — www.unicef.org
Severe wasting is the most lethal form of undernutrition, and one of the top threats to child survival. Around 1 in 5 deaths among children under 5 are attributed to severe wasting, which is caused by a lack of nutritious food and repeated bouts of diseases such as diarrhoea, measles and malaria, which in turn compromise a child’s immunity.
News and Updates
JOINT STATEMENT: G7 Presidency, World Bank Group Establish Global Alliance for Food Security to Catalyze Response to Food Crisis — www.worldbank.org WASHINGTON/BERLIN, 19 May 2022—The Global Alliance for Food Security (GAFS), jointly convened by the Group of Seven (G7) Presidency and the World Bank Group to catalyze an immediate and concerted response to the unfolding global hunger crisis, was launched at the G7 Development Ministers meeting today in Berlin, Germany.
WHO collaborating center supports global nutrition research - Cornell Chronicle — news.cornell.edu The World Health Organization has selected the Division of Nutritional Sciences to lead systematic reviews and training supporting the development of WHO guidelines and research networks.
2022 Laureate Letter - The World Food Prize - Improving the Quality, Quantity and Availability of Food in the World — www.worldfoodprize.org On May 12, 2022 the World Food Prize Foundation released a powerful statement penned by 26 of its Laureates urging the G7 Heads of Government to leverage food systems to tackle global hunger, COVID-19, climate change and conflict ahead of the G7 Agriculture Ministers and G7 Foreign Ministers preparatory meetings.
Knowledge Translation Awards | Cochrane Hong Kong — hongkong.cochrane.org
Award Details:
- Open to undergraduate and postgraduate students.
- All works will be judged by a panel of clinicians and local and international evidence-based specialists anonymously to ensure unbiased and fair adjudication.
Call for entries: from 30 May 2022 till 31 July 2022
‘Coalition of the willing’ to ensure healthy diets from sustainable food systems - UN News — news.un.org Ensuring everyone has access to a healthy diet is among the goals of a UN-backed initiative launched on Friday in line with efforts to transform food systems globally. |
USAID Launches $5.9 Million Food Safety Program in Ethiopia — www.gainhealth.org USAID has launched a new five-year program to improve food safety in Ethiopia. EatSafe: Evidence and Action Towards Safe Nutritious Food is a new program of United States Agency for International Development’s Feed The Future Initiative
Latest figures of acute hunger and malnutrition — www.fightfoodcrises.net
On 4 May 2022, the Global Network Against Food Crises released the latest numbers on people facing acute hunger and malnutrition in crisis-prone countries presented in the 2022 Global Report on Food Crises. The report is facilitated by the Food Security Information Network.
This scoping review assessed how studies of food systems for healthy diets have addressed the role of vegetables in low- and middle-income countries. We apply the PRISMA guidelines for scoping reviews to narratively map the literature to an accepted food systems framework and identify research gaps.
We conducted a scoping review to characterize the evidence base for the effectiveness of food supplementation (FS), nutrition education (NE), or FS/NE interventions to prevent wasting among children aged 6 to 59 mo. We aimed to identify gaps in peer-reviewed literature and to develop recommendations for strengthening study designs.
Recent Publications from the PIN Community
In this observational cohort study, we surveyed pregnancies for adverse birth outcomes at eight hospitals from July, 2014, to July, 2018, and 18 hospitals from August, 2018, to December, 2020, in Botswana to assess four routine supplementation strategies in women presenting before 24 weeks' gestation: folic acid only, iron only, iron and folic acid supplementation (IFAS), and MMS.
Systematic review of metrics used to characterise dietary nutrient supply from household consumption and expenditure surveys - PubMed HCES data are increasingly being used to assess diets across populations. More research is needed to inform the development of a framework to guide the use of and qualified interpretation of dietary assessments based on these data.
Strategies and interventions for healthy adolescent growth, nutrition, and development - PubMed Adolescence is a pivotal point in the life course, characterised by transformative physical, cognitive, and emotional growth, an openness to change, and a drive to reshape the social environment. It offers unique opportunities to adopt changes in diet and physical activity that can persist into late …
We searched the literature for published research articles, patents, and information from manufacturers of mobile devices, particularly those appropriate for low-resource settings. The included devices were required to be portable (lightweight and ideally not needing a power outlet) and to measure vitamin A as well as define VAD.
Dietary data of 13,076 participants aged 15 years or older were obtained from wave 2011 of CHNS, and each food and non-alcoholic beverage was grouped into 29 food groups of the DQQ. The data were analyzed to determine the most commonly consumed food items in each food group, nationally and in each province.
Food choice in transition: adolescent autonomy, agency, and the food environment - PubMed Dietary intake during adolescence sets the foundation for a healthy life, but adolescents are diverse in their dietary patterns and in factors that influence food choice. More evidence to understand the key diet-related issues and the meaning and context of food choices for adolescents is needed to …
Food biodiversity: Quantifying the unquantifiable in human diets - PubMed
In this narrative review, we summarize the key conceptual issues underlying the measurement of food biodiversity at an edible species level, assess the ecologicaldiversity indices previously applied to food consumption and food supply data, discuss their relative suitability, and potential amendments for use in (quantitative) dietary intake studies. Ecological diversity indices are often used without justification through the lens of nutrition.
Provision of folic acid for reducing arsenic toxicity in arsenic-exposed children and adults - PubMed There is moderate-certainty evidence that FA supplements may benefit blood arsenic concentration, urinary arsenic methylation profiles, and plasma homocysteine concentration versus placebo. There is low-certainty evidence that FA supplements plus other nutrients may benefit blood arsenic and plasma …