Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

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    • Dear High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition,

      Congratulations for the initiative for developing a comprehensive and cross-cutting data process framework. I am providing comments on behalf of the WHO Department of Nutrition and Food Safety (NFS).

      The final product, I believe, can provide significant contribution to the food security and nutrition. NFS is interested to contribute in more details, in special within the context of WHO's data governance framework, so that it can be an alignment. The WHO framework is been developed in partnership with some of the key stakeholders for global health estimates, such as Health Data Collaborative. I attach two slides that describe the steps involved in that case.

      Before specific comments, I would like to highlight the fact that food safety only appears very late in the document, while perhaps it should be one of the cross-cutting areas, put more in evidence. It is an area that is of increasing interest in terms of data collection, and it would profit of being a more significant part of this kind of document.

      My initial comments are attached for your consideration. Overall, I had difficulties to understand  Chapter 1 main objective – for the proposed framework. Would that be to define pathways to build evidence for decision making through setting research priorities? Or the actual steps in terms of data process harmonization? Or both?

      Chapter 2 on the potential sources for data and current initiatives is very useful, however I thought the text per se are too much focused on limitations rather than opportunities.

      Chapter 3 is my favorite, as it describes at lengthy all our every-day challenges in collating and analysing data, and common issues with data processing all areas face. Section 3.1.1 contains useful information but heavy to read, with long paragraphs. Perhaps is possible to break a bit or provide less details… In Section 3.3, I believe one needs to be careful not to put all "sophisticated" analysis in one basket with a rotten potato. Robust analyses can be critical to address key gaps and several can be made interpretable if communicated in the right way. When assumptions used can be explained in a transparent manner and are aligned with evidence, sophisticated analysis hold well and help the building of good and so well-needed evidence.

      In turn, in Chapter 4, innovation is encouraged and this is good, I believe. Perhaps bringing more the idea that standardized methods to carry out these new forms of data collection are needed, as well as how to make use of them without jeopardizing quality of evidence gathered.

      Thank you very much for the opportunity for all of us to contribute to this report. I look forward to further collaboration and the next version.

      Kind regards,

      Elaine Borghi, PhD

      Unit Head, Monitoring Nutrition Status and Food Safety Events Unit

      Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, World Health Organization

      Geneva, Switzerland

      See the attachments: