Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Re: Policy outreach and communications - what works for improving food security and nutrition at the country level?

Santosh Kumar Mishra

Population Education Resource Centre (PERC)
India

Dear Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum),

Please find below and attached my contribution. I hope you will find it interesting.

With best regards

Dr. Santosh Kumar Mishra (Ph. D.),

Technical Assistant,

Population Education Resource Centre (PERC),

Department of Continuing and Adult Education and Extension Work,

S. N. D. T. Women's University,

Mumbai - 400020, Maharashtra, India.

  1. What innovative strategies and channels have you used to reach policy makers and get feedback on their emerging needs?

I am researcher & demographer employed with the Population Education Resource Centre (PERC), S. N. D. T. Women’s University (SNDTWU, http://sndt.ac.in/), Mumbai, India. My academic activities at the PERC primarily include research and publication/material production. I resort to make direct contact with the policy makers through my research views and findings. I look at research not only as a tool for discovering innovative ideas, but also as medium for communication and dissemination of information and policy level strategies. 

  1. Have you ever significantly changed your communication or policy outreach strategy? How did you change it? Did you get better results? 

No, I have not significantly changed my communication or policy outreach strategy.

  1. What role do intermediaries (the media, “champions” in the government, etc.) play in helping you communicate your recommendations to policy makers? 

Print media (including journals), in particular, influence policy makers to some extent. Of course, this strategy alone does not yield desired result. It also requires lobbying by influential social activists, researchers and other like-minded personnel. There has to be network of all these people in order to transport the recommendations to policy makers.   

  1. If you are a policy maker or user of FSN information, how do you communicate your information needs to the information producers? What should information producers consider when trying to increase the use of their evidence by policy makers?

It is possible to communicate about the information need to the information producer ONLY IF both I and the information producer are PART OF THE SAME PROJECT/ORGANIZATION. The more people who enter this positive loop, the faster it spins. The more people who take part, the faster the human species learns.

  1. More than anything we would like to hear your success stories about what actually worked in terms of your information being used by policy makers! 

In terms of what actually worked, it is an uphill ask to get insight into whether or not policy makers use the information provided. Information and input might have been institutionalized by the policy makers in one or several programs within the region of a country. But there is no mechanism to find out if this has actually happened.

See the attachments: