Standing Together for Nutrition – Micronutrient Forum

The project responds to the urgent need for improved geospatially indicative and timely data to better understand who is suffering from increased hunger and malnutrition due to COVID-19. Standing Together for Nutrition (STfN) is hosted by the Micronutrient Forum and co-chaired by the Micronutrient Forum and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. It includes partners such as John Hopkins University the International Food Policy Research Institute the World Bank the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations UNICEF and Results for Development. Standing Together for Nutrition is a unique consortium of food security nutrition health and economic experts from global regional and local institutes in low- and middle- income countries. STfN aims to quantify the scale of problems related to food security and nutrition due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This project supports STfN with a budget of $1.09 million over 18-months. Project activities include: (1) promoting the collection and dissemination of data and modelling COVID-19’s impact on nutrition with a focus on how gender and other inequalities can be addressed; (2) increasing the effectiveness of COVID-19 response programming for nutrition by generating and disseminating nutrition data on women children and vulnerable populations to inform decision-making; and (3) synthesizing and harmonizing data to inform national and global nutrition policies and program priorities.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) increased country- and region- specific data on nutrition and factors that influence vulnerability such as gender income and location of residence; (2) enhanced the availability and dissemination of data and results through reports webinars white papers and peer-review journal articles; (3) developed context-specific and gender-sensitive nutrition recommendations that target national sub-national and regional levels; and (4) increased evidence-based health nutrition social protection and food system pandemic response commitments through targeted advocacy efforts.