Report of the Workshop on Policy-Driven Analysis of Food Consumption and Access Data to improve Micronutrient Intakes

There are currently several global research and evidence generation projects working to inform micronutrient programming, particularly fortification, using household- or individual-level dietary data and modelling techniques. While these projects collaborate and keep each other updated, there had been limited opportunity to work together in-person and explore opportunities for aligning analytical approaches and evidence outputs intended. As well as identifying complementary research that, together, provide a stronger, more comprehensive evidence base. There was also an interest in ensuring policy relevance and applicability of these analyses and evidence generation and seeking guidance on how to improve this as a group. The five-day workshop on policy-driven analysis of food consumption, micronutrient status and access data to improve micronutrient intakes was a collaborative effort to bring together global nutrition modelling and data projects (including MIMI, MAPS, MINIMOD, Fraym, DInA, and the FAOSTAT Food & Diet Domain and FAO/WHO GIFT Platform) with national policymakers, to better understand the functions and outputs of each project, combine analysis and outputs and explore how this work could be more policy responsive. The workshop aimed to explore how analytical approaches and data used by various projects could be combined to respond to prioritised policy questions for a case study country. This process was supported by the presence of a small number of policy stakeholders and data partners from Nigeria, the case study country. Three exemplar policy questions were jointly identified on the first day of the workshop: 1) Why are we fortifying what we are fortifying? 2) How to make a case for scaling up rice fortification in Nigeria? 3) What minimum and maximum levels of micronutrients should be specified in Nigeria’s mandatory fortification standards? To achieve the workshop’s objective, three cross-project working groups were formed to plan and conduct analysis and develop evidence outputs to respond to these policy questions. Analysis was conducted using available household-level food consumption microdata from the 2018-19 Nigeria Living Standards Survey, preliminary summary results from the 2021 Nigeria Food Consumption and Micronutrient Survey and available 2011 individual-level food consumption microdata from the FAO/WHO GIFT Platform. Groups presented updates and outputs from their analysis work on each consecutive day of the workshop and received feedback and suggestions from other participants, led by the Nigerian policy representatives. Cross-cutting discussions focused on improving the communication and packaging of evidence products for policy use, and how to build capacity for analysts and researchers in Nigeria to utilise the soon-to-be-released National Food Consumption and Micronutrient Survey (NFCMS) in order to respond to policy questions. This selection of participants was not done with an aim to be, nor presumes to be representative of all views or policy stakeholders for fortification, nutrition policy or nutrition data analysis, either globally or in the Nigerian context.

Many of the projects have workshops or meetings in Nigeria planned in their 2024 workplan to meet with a broad array of relevant stakeholders and invite their feedback into the individual pieces of analysis and any analytical outputs.