Entries by UNSCN Secretariat

ECOSOC 2019 Management Segment

6-7 June 2019
New York

The Management Segment serves the following functions:

  • The review of the reports of the Council’s subsidiary and expert bodies; these include the reports of all Functional Commissions, the Regional Commissions, the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations, as well as expert and ad hoc bodies. 
  • The system-wide coordination and review of specific development issues, with a view to promoting a more integrated response to specific areas (for example, gender mainstreaming or non-communicable diseases).
  • The consideration of special country situation or regional issues which are on the agenda of ECOSOC (including the work of its Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Haiti). 

On 6th June, in accordance with its mandate, UNSCN will present the Report for 2018.

Draft Programme

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FAO Webinar: Food-Based Dietary Guidelines: What are they? How they are used? What is their potential?

Tuesday 4 June
13.00 (GMT), 14.00 (CET)

Presenter: Fatima Hachem
Senior Nutrition and Food Systems Officer
Nutrition Education and Consumer Awareness Group, FAO

In the arena of food and nutrition, consumers around the globe are bombarded with information and advice on how to eat better in order to improve health and well-being. Having dietary guidelines that are food-based, built on scientific evidence and culturally and economically appropriate to the local context is what governments have been engaged in establishing in the last few decades.  Although these guidelines were thought essentially as a consumer education tool, the data and information base on which they are founded goes beyond the nutritional problems at country level to span a wide area of related sectors and policies. This renders the dietary guidelines useful for a range of other usages while addressing the local public health and nutrition priorities, including public procurement, social protection, food subsidies, food security and nutrition and agricultural policies. 

FAO has been actively assisting Member Countries in the development, implementation and revision of their Food-based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) and has been periodically reviewing the progress made in the development and use of FBDGs as well as tracking changes in their overall focus and orientation. FAO also hosts a growing online repository of FBDGs which is proving useful for researchers and policy-makers alike.

Join us for this webinar where we will provide an overview of food-based dietary guidelines focusing on the following questions:

  • What are national FBDGs?
  • How have they been traditionally used? 
  • What is their potential use?

The webinar will also highlight some examples of national FBDGs across the world, and present FAO’s current work in this field.

This is the first of a series of 6 webinars on FBDGs that are organized by the Nutrition Education and Consumer Awareness Team of FAO

Register here

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E-Conference: The Latest Evidence on Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture

3-5 June 2019

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture offers great potential for Sustainable Development Goal 2 as it connects agricultural development to improved nutrition outcomes. Examples of nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions are bio-fortification, home vegetable gardens, and small animal rearing (Ruel et al. 2018).

Since many nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions have been applied in recent years, this E-Conference aims to:

  • Take stock of what we have learned so far about nutrition-sensitive agriculture, i.e. what works and what does not work, and under what conditions?

  • Share and discuss this knowledge with practitioners in the field (e.g. farmers, extension workers, NGOs and policy makers)

  • Turn the evidence base into concrete recommendations for practitioners to implement effective nutrition-sensitive interventions in agricultural development

Register to join this free online conference. Subscribing allows you to participate in the daily live sessions with our experts and access the online community to discuss insights, exchange project results, ask questions and discuss challenges with colleagues from around the world.

Programme

Monday 3 June, 13:00 GMT: Smallholder production and Dietary Diversity

Matin Qaim of the University of Göttingen will discuss the linkages between smallholder on-farm production diversity and impacts on dietary diversity, as well as the impacts of specialization of cash crops on consumption benefits.

Tuesday 4 June, 13:00 GMT: Market Challenges and Solutions to Nutritious Food Access

Harold Alderman of IFPRI will discuss the linkages between markets, diets and nutrition with a particular focus on affordability and access of nutritious foods in low- and middle-income contexts, the challenges and potential market-based solutions.

Wednesday 5 June, 13:00 GMT: Women’s Empowerment for Better Nutrition

Agnes Quisumbing of IFPRI will discuss women’s empowerment as well as ownership and control of assets, and its impacts on child and women’s nutritional status and overall household food security.

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What is the Cost of a Healthy Diet? New Price Indexes Reveal Changes in Affordability of Nutritious Foods – IFPRI Policy Seminar

29 May, 2019 - 12:15 PM TO 01:45 PM EDT

Interventions and innovation can lower the price of individual foods, but healthy eating depends on access to a mix of foods from diverse sources. How has the overall cost of meeting dietary needs changed over time worldwide, and in Africa and South Asia specifically? What determines the cost of a healthy diet? And how does affordability affect dietary intake and health status in different locales?

To answer these questions, Changing Access to Nutritious Diets in Africa and South Asia (CANDASA) has been using new food price indexes that account for food substitutions to meet nutritional needs to evaluate food systems all over the world, including in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Malawi, and Tanzania.

This seminar will present the outcomes of CANDASA’s work to date, with a panel discussion featuring field researchers from each country to discuss the local and global implications of their results.

Research by Tufts and IFPRI on this topic is supported by UKAid and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Speakers

Discussant

Panelists

Light lunch will be available starting at 11:45am. Event begins promptly at 12:15pm.

Click here to register

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Ag2Nut Webinar – Development of Food-Based Dietary Guidelines in Ethiopia, and a Global Review of FBDG

Tuesday, May 21, 2019
9:00am New York
2:00pm London
3:00pm CEST
4:00pm Ethiopia

What is a healthy diet?  This Ag2Nut webinar presents how 90 countries have answered that question, sharing results from a newly-published Global Review of Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDG). The number of countries with FBDG is slowly increasing, and the newest will be Ethiopia, which is currently in the process of developing FBDG for the first time.  This discussion will give an inside view into how countries define healthy diets that are appropriate for nutrition, culture, and the specific food system of a place.

The webinar will be recorded.

Event page

Register here

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World Health Assembly

20–28 May 2019
Geneva, Switzerland

The World Health Assembly is the decision-making body of WHO. It is attended by delegations from all WHO Member States and focuses on a specific health agenda prepared by the Executive Board. The main functions of the World Health Assembly are to determine the policies of the Organization, appoint the Director-General, supervise financial policies, and review and approve the proposed programme budget. The Health Assembly is held annually in Geneva, Switzerland.

More information on the seventy-second World Health Assembly will follow.

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Urban Food Systems for Better Diets, Nutrition, and Health

Friday, 17 May 2019 
12:15 pm to 1:45 pm (EDT)
IFPRI, Washington, D.C. 20005

The explosive growth of cities all over the world has led to major shifts in diets, with serious consequences for the health and nutrition of the urban poor, especially in rapidly urbanizing low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia.

 To reverse this trend, we must take into account the realities of urban life and understand what role urban food systems and environments play in shaping food choices. For example, what are the urban poor eating, and where do they source their food—from informal markets, supermarkets, or urban gardens? And how do gender, household structure, time constraints, and personal preferences, among other things, shape these patterns? Designing effective urban food systems policies for healthier diets and optimal nutrition among the urban poor requires answers to these and many other questions. Building this evidence base—in addition to documenting, evaluating, and learning from current and past initiatives and policies—will enrich the dialogue and enhance our efforts to improve the well-being of poor urban dwellers.

 IFPRI speakers will be presenting the Institute’s new research program, Urban Food Systems for Better Diets, Nutrition, and Health. Invited guests will share experiences and provide examples of ongoing initiatives, policies, and partnerships that are successfully tackling issues of urban diets, nutrition, and health among the urban poor.

Unable to attend in person? Click here to watch online.

Register here.

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Nutrition News – Issue 2, 2019

In an effort to present nutrition related news at the global and country level, UNSCN and the UNN Secretariats are teaming up to produce the first comprehensive overview of recent developments supported and/or coordinated by the UN system.

The second issue for 2019 includes:

  • Enhancing food systems dialogues in Central Asia and Caucasus
  • How close is Sierra Leone to implementing nutrition action at scale?
  • Climate and nutrition communities unite
  • New national nutrition strategy and plan: the keys to a healthy and productive Basotho Nation
  • IFAD demonstrates progress on Nutrition Decade
  • New era of SUN Movement is brewing in Peru
  • Publications and a calendar of nutrition related events

You can access you copy here. 

 

Photo credit: @FAO/Sergey Kozmin

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