IANDA Project Website Official Launch
We are pleased to officially announce the IANDA Project website to our colleagues and the broader agriculture and nutrition community. We hope that you will enjoy browsing through our website. See below for our announcement:
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to introduce you to the Indicators of Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Africa (IANDA) Project. The IANDA Project (2015-2017) is implemented by the Tufts University Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and Competitive Research Grants to Develop Innovative Methods and Metrics for Agriculture and Nutrition Actions (IMMANA Grants) and funded with UK aid from the UK government.
Agriculture can influence food security and nutrition through multiple pathways, including by increasing the year-round availability and affordability of diverse, nutritious foods and diets. Current monitoring of “food” prices typically reflects either staple grain commodities or an aggregate food basket with little relationship to dietary needs. Food prices need to be tracked in a way that reflects access to food to meet dietary needs, consistent with the definition of food security. This project seeks to revolutionize how existing food price data can be used, with very little added cost to existing monitoring systems, in order to understand the availability of nutritious diets across seasons and geographies.
In collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and researchers from the University of Ghana and the Sokoine University of Agriculture, the IANDA Project aims to achieve the following objectives:
- Use currently available food price and market data to develop valid and feasible metrics of the availability and affordability of nutritious, diverse foods and diets in markets throughout the year;
- Ensure that these indicators serve the needs of national policymakers and program planners across agriculture, nutrition, and health sectors, through a participatory process of data identification and user consultation in Ghana and Tanzania; and
- Recommend methods for indicator construction and for modifying food price monitoring and other data collection systems that will encourage the widespread adoption of these indicators at national and global levels.
During our first year we completed the following milestones and activities:
- Built a team of researchers and network of experts in the areas of food, nutrition, agriculture, and economics;
- Conducted a landscape assessment of food price data collection in Ghana and Tanzania;
- Held food price data stakeholder and end user workshops in Ghana and Tanzania;
- Presented at the first annual Agriculture, Nutrition, and Health Academy Week; and
- Began developing our dashboard of key indicators.
We will continue to build on these activities and are excited for the year ahead.
To learn more about the project and for activity updates, visit our website at ianda.nutrition.tufts.edu and follow us on Twitter at @IANDAProject.
Sincerely,
Dr. Jennifer Coates, IANDA Principal Investigator
Associate Professor and Senior Researcher
Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy
Tufts University
Dr. Anna Herforth, IANDA Project Director
Adjunct Associate Research Scientist
The Earth Institute
Columbia University