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Leah Richardson
(acting Cluster Coordinator)
Global Nutrition Cluster Advisor
UNICEF, New York
Phone:+1 212 326 7764
lrichardson@unicef.org
Josephine Rajasegera
Project Officer
Global Nutrition Cluster
UNICEF, New York
Phone: +1 212 326 7072
jrajasegera@unicef.org
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The Nutrition Cluster has 32 members with UNICEF as the lead agency. Action Against Hunger Alliance, Center for Disease Control (CDC), Concern Worldwide, ECHO, Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN), FAO, Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project (FANTA)/USAID, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Helen Keller International, International Medical Corps, International Relief and Development (IRD), Institute of Child Health/UK, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Interaction, International Rescue Committee (IRC), Merlin, Micronutrient Initiative, NutritionWorks, Oxfam UK, Save the Children Alliance, Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN), Tufts University Feinstein International Center, University of Westminster, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNRWA, UNU, Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA)/USAID, Valid International, WFP, WHO, and World Vision. (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - France is an observer).
Updated Member and Observer List of GNC
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A number of gaps and opportunities or focus areas have been identified by the Nutrition Cluster partners and the strategic opportunity lies in ensuring the right information gets to the right people in a timely and accessible manner. The four focus areas for the Nutrition Cluster are strategic and are not meant to be exhaustive and include a)coordination, b)capacity building, c)emergency preparedness, assessment,monitoring, surveillance, and c)supply. read more...
Click here for key resource documents on nutrition in emergencies
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The Global Nutrition Cluster supports face-to-face meetings of members as well as separate face-to-face working group meeting on an as needed basis. These meetings are a time during which members can be updated on nutirtion cluster acitivies and provides a convienent forum for activity related decision making. Budget and workplanning issues are also frequently tackled. A handful of representatives from country clusters participate in each meeting in order to improve support to the field clusters and to bring the country cluster experiences and lessons learned to the global cluster members.
The most recent meeting was the16-18th September 2008 at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. The agenda covered the Global Cluster workplanning, the way forward for the Cluster in 2009, regional nutrition concerns, and allowed space for country cluster representatives and Global Cluster Workfing Groups to report back. The meeting report can be found here. Meetings presentations for Day 1, Day 1 Country Presentations and Day 2 Session 3 and Day 2 Session 4&5 can be found here.
Please select from drop-down arrow in box below, for previous meetings.
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Go
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| Nutrition Cluster Working Groups
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The Global Nutrition Cluster has two working groups which meet to further address gaps in nutrition in emergencies. The Capacity Development Working Group (CDWG) tackles a broad range of capacity building activities while the Assessment Working Group (AWG) is concerned with issues surrounding information management. For more information on activities, member lists and minutes from recent working group meetings,as well as details about Tools the Cluster has developed, please click on the working group links above.
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| Nutrition Cluster Projects
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Global Nutrition Cluster has funded a number of projects and reserach areas in order to actively address some of the identified gaps in nutrition in emergencies. Below is a listing of our ongoing or active projects. For a listing of all active agreements in 2009 please click here.
Use of Lipid-based Nutrient Supplements (LNS) in emergency settings: Development of a technical paper on the potential role of LNS to improve the nutritional quality of foods provided in emergency settings, and testing the impact of this approach. This project is managed by UC-Davis. click here for narrative update
SMART
Part A: Operationalization of Standard Monitoring and Assessment in Relief and Transition (SMART). Coordinate activities and finalize version 2 of SMART; provide necessary institutional support and guarantee the processes of research, methods development, integration of the different modules and capacity building.
click here for narrative update. click here for project summary
Part B: Regional West Africa training of trainers on SMART. Improve the technical quality of nutrition, health and other outcome data in emergencies by training on the use of SMART methodology in West Africa.
Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP): Analyze the 'place' of nutrition in the CAP and their outcomes, assessing if there has been significant changes over time, since the cluster approach came into being, and how future appeals may look without the cluster in place. This project is managed by Tufts University.
SPHERE Handbook: Revise and update the minimum standards in nutrition component of chapter 3 of the SPHERE handbook taking into account reported programming experiences, technical advances and working to reflect the cluster approach and work of the Nutrition Cluster at global and national levels; Contribute as required to revisions in cross cutting issues. This project is managed by Save UK. SPHERE Update
Dietary Management of Moderate Malnutrition: Improve guidance on dietary management of moderate malnutrition by selection of potential members, invitation, development of terms of reference, organization of first meeting, follow-up workshop to define scope, objectives and commission background papers.
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC): Review and adopt the current technical specifications on mortality and nutrition of the IPC classification (including key reference outcomes, thresholds and overall technical guidance). Specific objectives include: 1. Review the technical proposals made so far to the IPC Technical Working Group on how to modify the nutrition and mortality indicators currently used in the pick classification. 2. Provide recommendations on additional indicators to be added to the IPC based on existing consensus or evidence in the nutrition/public health community. 3. For all indicators reviewed and identified under points 1 and 2 above, give guidance on possible thresholds. 4. Provide recommendations and guidance on the use of the different indicators and thresholds for inclusion in the manual with a focus on trends and contextual analysis. This project is managed by FAO.
Nutrition Supply Chain Articulation (ART): Improve availability of emergency nutrition supplies with training tools. Analysis and improvement of two therapeutic food product supply chains. This project is managed out of UNICEF, Copenhagen.
MAMI Project: Development of Best Practice Interim Guidelines providing guidance on the management of acute malnutrition in infants under 6 months.This is a collaborative effort between the Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN), The Centre for International Health and Development (CIHD) at UCL, London and Action Contre la Faim, and is funded by the Nutrition Cluster. click here for summary
Strengthening the Utility of the Field Exchange: The overall objective of the UFEX Project is to organize Field Exchange material so that it becomes more accessible to trainers, researchers and program staff by creating a searchable catalogue of Field Exchange material available in a) hard copy, b) on the ENN and Nutrition Cluster websites and c) on CD-Rom.
Updating of NutVal Software: Update the NutVal database of food aid commodity nutrient content (click for commodities) and implement a ration optimisation function using linear programming. The project is undertaken by WFP in collaboration with UCL/ICH. NutVal.Net has been created to allow users to always access the latest version of the the software, to facilitate feedback and bug reporting, and encourage suggestions for new features and modifications. The latest version of the program is in a Excel Spreadsheet (Version 2) and was released in August 2008. There are a number of minor changes in this Version 2 over the 2006 Version 1 including the dropping of commodity price data and an adjustment to the energy contribution of breast milk. A further updated version will be available by the end of 2008. Please visit: www.nutval.net
Revision of Selective Feeding Guidelines for the Management of Malnutrition in Emergencies: Revise the Guidelines for Selective Feeding Programs in Emergencies in order to produce an updated policy that takes into consideration developments in the field of management of severe and moderate acute malnutrition and other nutritional needs arising in the context of emergencies. This project is manged by UNHCR in collaboration with WFP, WHO and the SCN. The guidelines will be ready April 2009.
Click here for completed projects
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| Nutrition Cluster Products
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Harmonized Training Package for Nutrition in Emergencies October 08 revision click here
Toolkit for Nutrition in Emergencies click here
Now available on Mini CD
Factsheet: WHO Growth Standards in Emergencies, March 2009, click here for:
English
French
Spanish
Arabic
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| Cluster Coordinator Training
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As part of the UN Humanitarian Reform process Global Nutrition Cluster runs training courses for existing and potential Cluster Coordinators. Individuals who will have taken this training, and who have been found to possess the neccessary skills, will be placed on the roster to respond to future emergencies.
A Nutrition Cluster Coordinator Training will be held July 20-24, 2009 and is targeting exisiting Nutrition Cluster Coordinators for all regions. Generic TORs for Nutrition Cluster Coordinators can be found under key douments. Expressions of interest for future trainings can be sent with an updated P11 and CV to Leah Richardson (lrichardson@unicef.org).
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