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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

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researcher spotlight

Samuel Benin

Samuel Benin is the Acting Director for Africa in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. He conducts research on national strategies and public investment for accelerating food systems transformation in Africa and provides analytical support to the African Union’s CAADP Biennial Review.

Where we work

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Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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experts

Nutrition, Diets, and Health

Amanda Wyatt

Senior Program Manager

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Bio

Amanda Wyatt is a Senior Program Manager in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit. She is working with the CGIAR Research Initiative on Sustainable Healthy Diets through Food Systems Transformation (SHiFT), a multi-partner, multi-country research program aiming to identify transformative innovations and policies and strengthen stakeholders’ capacity toward food system transformations that enable consumption of sustainable healthy diets for all. From 2012 to 2021, she supported the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH), initially as a Senior Research Assistant before becoming the Program Manager in 2014. She has field experience in East Africa and Southeast Asia. Before joining IFPRI, Amanda’s professional experience included research on the influence of a health coaching model on nutrition and physical activity behavior, community development work with resettled refugees, and work in a health policy think tank and in local government. Amanda received a master’s in Public Health from Emory University with a focus on Global Health and Public Nutrition and a bachelor’s degree in Communication from Truman State University.

Publications

Publications

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Working Paper

Using outcome trajectory evaluation to assess HarvestPlus’ contribution to the development of national biofortification breeding programs

2022Douthwaite, Boru; Johnson, Nancy L.; Wyatt, Amanda
Details

Using outcome trajectory evaluation to assess HarvestPlus’ contribution to the development of national biofortification breeding programs

While the key role that policy plays in sustainable development has long been recognized, rigorously documenting the influence of research on policy outcomes faces conceptual, empirical and even political challenges. Addressing these challenges is increasingly urgent since improving policies—broadly defined—is at the heart of the structural transformation agenda. This paper describes the use of a new evaluation method—outcomes trajectory evaluation (OTE), based on both evaluation and policy process theory—to explore the influence of HarvestPlus, a large and complex research for development program focused on improving nutrition, on a specific policy outcome, namely the establishment of crop biofortification breeding programs in national agricultural research institutes in Bangladesh, India and Rwanda. The findings support claims of significant HarvestPlus contributions to the establishment of the programs while also raising issues that need to be monitored moving forward to ensure sustainability. The paper also discusses the pros and cons of the OTE approach in terms of both methodological rigor and program learning. In particular, the fact that HarvestPlus is a long-running program allows us to reflect on how a “backward looking” approach such as OTE builds on and complements the more “forward looking,” theory of change-based approaches that informed HarvestPlus programming and evaluation during its earlier, highly-successful phases. Such a long-run perspective is rare in development evaluation and it offers important lessons for how to think about and plan for evaluation over the course of a complex agriculture research for development program.

Year published

2022

Authors

Douthwaite, Boru; Johnson, Nancy L.; Wyatt, Amanda

Citation

Douthwaite, Boru; Johnson, Nancy L.; and Wyatt, Amanda. 2022. Using outcome trajectory evaluation to assess HarvestPlus’ contribution to the development of national biofortification breeding programs. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2104. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.134976

Country/Region

Bangladesh; India; Rwanda

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Middle Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Africa; Eastern Africa; Biofortification; Programmes; Capacity Development; Evaluation; Sustainable Development; Policy Process Evaluation; Social Norms

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.134976 Source record

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Where are the opportunities for accelerating food systems innovations for healthier diets? Findings and lessons from Viet Nam

2021Johnson, Nancy L.; Wyatt, Amanda; Nguyen, Trang
Details

Where are the opportunities for accelerating food systems innovations for healthier diets? Findings and lessons from Viet Nam

This paper examines how research on the impacts of food systems innovations can accelerate their contributions to healthier diets and to equitable and sustainable food systems more generally. Building on research from the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) flagship on Food Systems for Healthier Diets, the paper looks at how evidence from past studies of the impacts of food systems innovations on diet-related outcomes maps to current food system priorities in Viet Nam, one of the program’s focus countries. It then explores what the studies can tell us about the impact pathways from innovations to healthier diets and other outcomes. The findings highlight some promising innovations that have potential for further research and scaling. A revised impact pathway is also proposed based on a new understanding of how the concept of the food environment can be integrated into an impact pathway framework. The new impact pathway and associated assumptions—taken together, the theory of change—can support better understanding and analysis of the impacts of food system innovations on diets.

Year published

2021

Authors

Johnson, Nancy L.; Wyatt, Amanda; Nguyen, Trang

Citation

Johnson, Nancy; Wyatt, Amanda; and Nguyen, Trang. 2021. Where are the opportunities for accelerating food systems innovations for healthier diets? Findings and lessons from Viet Nam. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2030. Washington, DC: International Food Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.134442

Country/Region

Vietnam

Keywords

South-eastern Asia; Asia; Innovation; Food Environment; Healthy Diets; Impact Pathways; Diet; Food Systems

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.134442 Source record

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Working Paper

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Journal Article

Gender, time-use, and energy expenditures in rural communities in India and Nepal

2020Picchioni, Fiorella; Zanello, Giacomo; Srinivasan, C. S.; Wyatt, Amanda; Webb, Patrick
Details

Gender, time-use, and energy expenditures in rural communities in India and Nepal

Women’s patterns of time-use, which proxy the work burdens associated with productive and reproductive activities, are an important determinant of nutrition and well-being in LMICs. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how patterns of time-use translate into patterns of physical activity and energy expenditure, particularly in rural areas where seasonal agricultural labour plays such an important role. We address this gap by integrating energy expenditure data derived from wearable tri-axial accelerometers with time-use data from conventional recall-based surveys. Using datasets from agricultural households in four rural communities in India and Nepal, our results show that there are significant gender differences in the patterns of time-use and energy expenditure. Men and women participate equally in productive work, however, women shoulder most of the additional reproductive work burdens in rural households at the expense of leisure opportunities. Our results provide insights into women’s responses to opportunities for productive work and highlight the nature of trade-offs they face.

Year published

2020

Authors

Picchioni, Fiorella; Zanello, Giacomo; Srinivasan, C. S.; Wyatt, Amanda; Webb, Patrick

Citation

Picchioni, Fiorella; Zanello, Giacomo; Srinivasan, C. S.; Wyatt, Amanda J.; and Webb, Patrick. 2020. Gender, time-use, and energy expenditures in rural communities in India and Nepal. World Development 136(December 2020): 105137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105137

Country/Region

India; Nepal

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Rural Communities; Gender; Energy Expenditure; Labour; Livelihoods; Time; Time Use Patterns; Seasonality

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105137 Source record

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Journal Article

Events

Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security
IFPRI Program/Country Event

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May 15 to 17, 2014

Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security

Poor countries and vulnerable people are being hit by a barrage of economic, environmental, and political shocks, and these shocks are becoming more frequent and intense. There is a general understanding that building resilience means helping individuals, households, communities, and countries prepare for, cope with, and recover from such shocks. However, there is far less […]

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