Congratulations on a timely and thorough analysis of the challenges, and suggestions of possible solutions, to “Data collection and analysis tools for food security and nutrition “. Below, please find three overarching comments.
The framework and systems thinking
Considering the conceptual framework is built on ecological models, it might work well as a communication tool, but in order to move on to decision-making, building systems models that could be dynamic hypothesis of how the determinants at the different levels are interconnected and driving food security and nutrition would be important. Furthermore, such models could be used to simulate different scenarios using the national data which could be particularly useful in step 3 and 4 of the data driven decision making cycle,
Building the infrastructure and governance of the data
Based on the overview of existing initiatives on multi-country sources of data (table 1) there seem to be a potential for FAO/WHO/the UN system to take a leading role in building an infrastructure that is accessible to all, ensures the relevance of the data collected with reference to the conceptual framework/systems models and avoids duplication of data collection.
Setting up infrastructures that enables researchers to use “big data” to address the relationship between the food systems, the consumer choices, nutrition and health across countries, and socio-demographic groups of the population is important but challenging to get support for. A recent attempt to get the proposal of the Food, Nutrition and Health Research Infrastructure on the ESFRI Roadmap in Europe was unsuccessful (https://fnhri.eu/), but might be relevant to draw on.
Best-practice cases with cost estimates
The complexity of, and the resources and capacities, required to deliver the data as outlined in the framework might make it look unrealistic to achieve this. Although there is probably no country currently doing this, there might be best practice cases that can be shared as examples and also be used to indicate the cost of collecting, analysing and using the data to provide the output that the report is envisioning.
Kind regards Professor Nanna Lien,
Public Health Nutrition, Department of Nutrition, University of Oslo, Norway
Nanna Lien