An online panel event organised in collaboration with Cambridge Reproduction SRI on the international challenges of early years nutrition.
Our panel of experts on international child health policy, geography, education and nutrition discussed the factors that influence nutrition, physical and mental development in the early years, as well as the challenges that families face in raising healthy children and differences between the Global North and Global South, how they can be overcome and who should drive this change.
Please find a written report on the event here.
Please find the event recording here.
Our panel:
Chair:
Professor Alice Reid, Director of the Cambridge Group for the History and Population and Social Structure, University of Cambridge.
Alice is a historical demographer, working on fertility, mortality and health in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Speakers:
Dr Akanksha Marphatia, Honorary Research Associate, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Akanksha's research focuses on how gender inequality, maternal and infant undernutrition shape educational attainment and girls' early marriage. She has recently applied this geographical perspective on a joint University of Cambridge and UCL project on women's early marriage in Nepal. She has two decades of experience working in international education and gender policy, most recently as Director of International Education at ActionAid International.
Mduduzi NN Mbuya, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)
Mduduzi is Director, Knowledge Leadership with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). He has worked for over two decades on nutrition sensitive programs and policy in LMIC, and in his current role at GAIN he is responsible for research and evaluation. He works with GAIN teams and partners to generate and use evidence to guide improved design and implementation of food systems program and to fill critical gaps in the global evidence.
Dr Ann Prentice, Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow, MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge
Ann is the former Director of the MRC Elsie Widdowson Laboratory (previously MRC Human Nutrition Research), Cambridge, and was Programme Leader of the MRC Nutrition and Bone Health Research Group, Cambridge, and Head of the Calcium, Vitamin D and Bone Health research team at MRC Unit The Gambia.
Rodrigo Rivera, Poverty and Food Security Analyst FAO
Rodrigo is an economist with experience in the analysis of food security and poverty in Latin America.