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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.

researcher spotlight

Kalyani Raghunathan

Kalyani Raghunathan is Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, based in New Delhi, India. Her research lies at the intersection of agriculture, gender, social protection, and public health and nutrition, with a specific focus on South Asia and Africa. 

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experts

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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Report

Resilient Cities urban nutrition profile: Bangladesh

2024Margolies, Amy; Choo, Esther; Singh, Nishmeet; Parvin, Aklima; Ruel, Marie T.; Olney, Deanna K.
Details

Resilient Cities urban nutrition profile: Bangladesh

Urban-rural disparities in undernutrition in children under five have dissipated. Stunting declined from 2014 to 2022 in both urban and rural areas, but more so in rural areas, leading to comparable rates of stunting in urban and rural areas (22 percent, 24 percent). Wasting remains “high” (according to the World Health Organization) in both urban and rural areas (11 percent). The prevalence of child overweight is low but increasing, especially in Dhaka. Vitamin A deficiency affects half of children under five. Vitamin D and iron deficiencies are higher in urban areas, with zinc and iodine deficiencies more prevalent in rural areas. Urban and rural diets lack fruits and vegetables. A third of urban households have inadequate caloric intake. The cost of a healthy diet increased from $3.03 to $3.64 per person per day from 2017– 2022 and the percentage of the population unable to afford a healthy diet fell from 65 to 48 percent. Currently, 82 million people are unable to afford a healthy diet in the country. The diet diversity of young children has improved since 2011, but gains were seen mostly in rural areas. The percentage of all children fed the minimum meal frequency dropped by 20 percentage points from 2017 to 2022. Urban informal settlements are a concern – children have higher rates of stunting, lower dietary diversity, and higher prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies compared to other urban children. Overweight and obesity in urban adults is a critical problem. More urban women (48 percent) are overweight compared to rural women (35 percent); the same is true for urban men (29 percent) compared to 17 percent for rural men. Some urban nutrition interventions to tackle child undernutrition are being implemented, but few have been rigorously evaluated. Data on urban food environments (FEs) is becoming more available, but there are gaps in knowledge, particularly on the design and evaluation of interventions to counter the influence of the country’s increasingly obesogenic urban FE. National policies include targeted actions to improve urban diets and nutrition. More could be done, however, to improve the healthiness and safety of FEs, leverage social protection programs for the urban poor to make healthy diets more affordable, and to implement double-duty actions to address all forms of malnutrition.

Year published

2024

Authors

Margolies, Amy; Choo, Esther; Singh, Nishmeet; Parvin, Aklima; Ruel, Marie T.; Olney, Deanna K.

Citation

Margolies, Amy; Choo, Esther; Singh, Nishmeet; Parvin, Aklima; Ruel, Marie; and Olney, Deanna. 2024. Resilient Cities urban nutrition profile: Bangladesh. Resilient Cities Country Profile. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Rural Urban Relations; Nutrition; Children; Stunting; Non-communicable Diseases; Micronutrient Deficiencies; Food Prices; Dietary Diversity; Food Environment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Sustainable Healthy Diets

Record type

Report

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Abstract

Achieving sustainability and scalability of a large-scale prenatal cash and food transfer intervention in Bangladesh

2024Akter, Fahmida; Parvin, Aklima; Roy, Shalini; Frongillo, Edward A.; Leroy, Jef L.; Larson, Leila M.
Details

Achieving sustainability and scalability of a large-scale prenatal cash and food transfer intervention in Bangladesh

Objectives: The WHO (2016) antenatal care guidelines recommend research on alternatives to prenatal energy and protein supplements – such as cash or food distribution. The Bangladesh government is currently implementing the Mother and Child Benefit Programme (MCBP) to improve prenatal nutrition and child health. We conducted implementation research that aimed to understand how the MCBP, and augmented versions of it, 1) stimulated behavior changes, 2) enabled or prevented participants to sustain behavior changes, and 3) achieved conditions required for program scale-up.

Year published

2024

Authors

Akter, Fahmida; Parvin, Aklima; Roy, Shalini; Frongillo, Edward A.; Leroy, Jef L.; Larson, Leila M.

Citation

Akter, Fahmida; Parvin, Aklima; Roy, Shalini; Frongillo, Edward A.; Leroy, Jef L.; and Larson, Leila M. 2024. Achieving sustainability and scalability of a large-scale prenatal cash and food transfer intervention in Bangladesh. Current Developments in Nutrition 8 (Supplement 2): 102923. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cdnut.2024.102923

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Cash Transfers; Nutrition Education; Sustainability; Women; Pregnancy

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cdnut.2024.102923 Source record

Record type

Abstract

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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