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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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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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Nutrition, Diets, and Health

Aklima Parvin

Senior Project Manager

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Bio

Aklima Parvin is a Senior Project Manager in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health Unit, based in Dhaka. She has more than 19 years of program management experience in planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating large-scale, complex, integrated nutrition-sensitive agriculture and social protection projects in Bangladesh. She has worked on nutrition and social protection issues under an experimental study jointly conducted by IFPRI and the World Food Programme (WFP). Since 2016, Parvin has been providing overall leadership and technical direction under the Ministry of Agriculture’s Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) pilot project. She currently supports the redesigning and launching of Joint Interventions to Improve Birth Outcomes and Nutrition (Jibon) program in close collaboration with the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs and WFP. Before coming to IFPRI, Parvin worked with the Food and Agriculture Organization, WFP, Bangladesh Breastfeeding Foundation, and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR’B). She received a master’s degree in Public Health from North South University and a master’s degree in Nutrition and Food Science from Dhaka University.

Publications

Publications

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Journal Article

Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh

2024Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona M.; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Roy, Shalini; Younus, Masuma
Details

Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh

In the context of rural Bangladesh, we assess whether agriculture training alone, nutrition behavior communication change (BCC) alone, combined agriculture training and nutrition BCC, or agriculture training and nutrition BCC combined with gender sensitization improve: (a) production diversity, either on household fields or through crop, livestock, or aquaculture activities carried out near the family homestead; and (b) diet diversity and the quality of household diets. All treatment arms were implemented by government employees. Implementation quality was high. No treatment increased production diversification of crops grown on fields. Treatment arms with agricultural training did increase the number of different crops grown in homestead gardens and the likelihood of any egg, dairy, or fish production but the magnitudes of these effect sizes were small. All agricultural treatment arms had, in percentage terms, large effects on measures of levels of homestead production. However, because baseline levels of production were low, the magnitude of these changes in absolute terms was modest. Nearly all treatment arms improved measures of food consumption and diet with the largest effects found when nutrition and agriculture training were combined. Relative to treatments combining agriculture and nutrition training, we find no significant impact of adding the gender sensitization on our measures of production diversity or diet quality. Interventions that combine agricultural training and nutrition BCC can improve both production diversity and diet quality, but they are not a panacea. They can, however, contribute toward better diets of rural households.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona M.; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Roy, Shalini; Younus, Masuma

Citation

Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; et al. 2024. Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 106(3): 1089-1110. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12427

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agriculture; Agricultural Training; Nutrition; Behaviour; Communication; Gender; Diversification; Production; Dietary Diversity; Aquaculture; Rural Areas; Households

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12427 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Do social protection programs in South Asia have the potential to be nutrition-sensitive? Insights from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan

2023Scott, Samuel; Neupane, Sumanta; Alderman, Harold; Kim, Sunny S.; Parvin, Aklima; Rasheed, Sabrina; Das, Jai K.; Rupakheti, Kiran; Menon, Purnima
Details

Do social protection programs in South Asia have the potential to be nutrition-sensitive? Insights from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan

Social protection programs (SPPs) are designed to help individuals and households cope with chronic poverty, destitution, and vulnerability. In the context of food systems, SPPs can help tackle the challenge of affordability of healthy diets. Nutrition-sensitive SPPs include conditions or additional interventions that enhance impacts on nutrition. This research note organizes SPPs in South Asia using an existing framework, describes their characteristics (scale, entitled benefits, and eligibility) and provides examples of features that can be added to SPPs to make them more nutrition-sensitive.

Year published

2023

Authors

Scott, Samuel; Neupane, Sumanta; Alderman, Harold; Kim, Sunny S.; Parvin, Aklima; Rasheed, Sabrina; Das, Jai K.; Rupakheti, Kiran; Menon, Purnima

Citation

Scott S, Neupane S, Alderman H, Kim S, Parvin A, Das j, Rasheed S, Rupakheti K, Menon P. 2023. Are social protection programs in South Asia nutrition-sensitive? Insights from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. TAFSSA Research Note 11. New Delhi, India: Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA).

Country/Region

Bangladesh; India; Nepal; Pakistan

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Social Protection; Targeting; Gender; Women; Women’s Empowerment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Brief

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Comparing delivery channels to promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh

2023Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona M.; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Roy, Shalini
Details

Comparing delivery channels to promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh

We use a randomized controlled trial in rural Bangladesh to compare two models of delivering nutrition content jointly to husbands and wives: deploying female nutrition workers versus mostly male agriculture extension workers. Both approaches increased nutrition knowledge of men and women, household and individual diet quality, and women’s empowerment. Intervention effects on agriculture and nutrition knowledge, agricultural production diversity, dietary diversity, women’s empowerment, and gender parity do not significantly differ between models where nutrition workers versus agriculture extension workers provide the training. The exception is in an attitudes score, where results indicate same-sex agents may affect scores differently than opposite-sex agents. Our results suggest opposite-sex agents may not necessarily be less effective in providing training. In South Asia, where agricultural extension systems and the pipeline to those systems are male dominated, training men to deliver nutrition messages may offer a temporary solution to the shortage of fe male extension workers and offer opportunities to scale and promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture. However, in both models, we find evidence that the presence of mothers-in-law within households modifies the programs’ effectiveness on some nutrition, empowerment, and attitude measures, suggesting that accounting for other influential household members is a potential area for future programming.

Year published

2023

Authors

Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona M.; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Roy, Shalini

Citation

Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; and Roy, Shalini. 2023. Comparing delivery channels to promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh. Food Policy 118(July 2023): 102484. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102484

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Rural Areas; Nutrition; Gender; Advisory Officers; Diet Quality; Knowledge Sharing; Intervention; Agricultural Production

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102484 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Journal Article