Nutrition Researcher Lazio

Nutrition Researcher
Roma
Lazio, Lazio

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

16 September 2024-23:59-GMT+01:00 Central European Time (Rome)

ABOUT WFP

The World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP's values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.

To learn more about WFP, visit our website:

WHY JOIN WFP? - WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. - WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment. - WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities. - A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe. - We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is one of the leading global institutions helping to measure and alleviate malnutrition. WFP supports national food and health systems across more than 80 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 and status, 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, risk of inadequate micronutrient intake 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. Large-Scale Food Fortification (LSFF) 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. WFP has long been involved in efforts to expand the scope and impact of LSFF.

Advocacy and decision making about LSFF and other micronutrient intervention programmes and policy, especially about whether, where, what, how and for whom to advocate for and implement such initiatives, require evidence. This includes information on micronutrient deficiencies and dietary intake for different populations, the likelihood that current diets are able to meet the recommended requirements for key vitamins and minerals and current intake of fortifiable foods among specific sub-groups of the population. They also require information about the extent to which different LSFF programmes, programme delivery scenarios, and other micronutrient interventions could assist in filling nutrient intake gaps for key populations. Such evidence is 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 needed and complexity of primary data collection on vitamin and mineral deficiency (VMD) and dietary intake, 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 intake inadequacy related to vulnerability in terms of gender, age, geography, biological status and illness.

The WFP specialises in uses innovative data approaches to support governments make infor