Nutrition Analyst Lazio

Nutrition Analyst
Roma
Lazio, Lazio

Selection of staff is made on a competitive basis, and we are committed to promoting diversity and gender balance

**Job Title**:Nutrition Analyst

**Type of Contract**:International Consultant

**Division: Nutrition**: Nutrition Division

**Duty Station (City, Country)**: HQ, Rome Italy

**Duration**:11 months

**BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT**:

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is one of the leading global institutions helping to measure and alleviate malnutrition and has long been involved in efforts to expand the scope and impact of Large-Scale Food Fortification (LSFF).

WFP supports national food and health systems across 73 countries as they strive to provide access, safely and systematically, to healthy, nutritious diets and reduce micronutrient deficiencies in women, children and the population at large.

A key part of this work is the generation of data on food and nutrition security, dietary diversity and access to nutritious foods and nutritious diets, including food costs and expenditure, and using these data to highlight where there are risks of insufficiencies, by target group, geography or vulnerability, reflected as hunger (insufficient dietary energy and coping strategies), unaffordability of nutrient-adequate diets, inadequate dietary diversity and likelihood of micronutrient deficiencies.

When households, and specific household members, are unable to meet their dietary micronutrient needs due to physical, financial or sociological barriers, it becomes necessary to consider additional pathways that can safeguard against micronutrient malnutrition.

Fortification is a powerful, cost-effective intervention for improving micronutrient intake that can be adapted to many food vehicles and contexts and delivered through different platforms, including both conventional commercial markets and food assistance, including school meals and social protection programs.

Ultimately, decisions about LSFF programmes and policy, specifically regarding whether, where, what, how and for whom to implement such initiatives, require evidence of the likelihood that current diets are able to meet the recommended requirements for key vitamins and minerals, of current intake including among specific sub-groups of the population, as well as of consumption of different food vehicles, (fortifiable) staples and condiments.

They also require information about the extent to which different LSFF programmes and other interventions could assist in filling nutrient intake gaps for key populations.

Such data are imperative to inform decisions across the LSFF ecosystem, including policy formulation, setting standards and determining whether LSFF is having an impact, in general, and with particular emphasis on those who are most vulnerable, with a focus on gender.

However, due to cost, time consumption and complexity of primary vitamin and mineral deficiency (VMD) data collection, there are still many gaps in data needed to quantify the problem, e. g. , magnitude and distribution of micronutrient malnutrition and nutrient inadequacy, as well as food consumption patterns within a population, required for proper program design and exploration of new cost-effective vehicles and entry points for fortification.

Further, existing data or methods of obtaining data are limited in their ability to describe dimensions of VMD related to vulnerability in terms of gender, age, geography, biological status and illness.

The WFP uses innovative data approaches to support governments make informed decisions about the design and effective implementation of nutrition policy and programs, including the integration of nutrition objectives across food systems - to achieve maximum impact.

The WFP Nutrition Division's Fill the Nutrient Gap (FNG) analysis, led by the Analytics and Science for Food and Nutrition (AS4FN) team, has been conducted in over 35 countries.

The FNG estimates the cost and affordability of nutritious diets for households and nutritionally vulnerable individuals at the sub-national level and models the potential of programmes from across sectors to fill nutrient intake gaps, including through fortification as well as increasing incomes, increasing production and lowering prices of nutritious foods etc.

Further, WFP's Research, Assessment and Monitoring Division's HungerMapLive is widely-used to inform humanitarian programming and food security situation monitoring.

HungerMapLive displays real-time information on food insecurity, nutrition and various relevant drivers using primary data collected using remote monitoring, estimates generated using machine learning-based predictive analytics and publicly available secondary data pulled automatically through Application Programming Interface (API's).

Lastly, the WFP Innovation Accelerator (INKA), sources, supports and scales high-impact innovations to achieve Zero Hunger.

Through the Accelerator, WFP is leveraging unprecedented advances in digital innov