Intervention Co-creation to Improve Community-based Food Production and Household Nutrition in Small Island Developing States (ICoFaN)

One in five members of the United Nations are Small Island Developing States (SIDS). A significant proportion of these countries are classified as low-income and eligible for official development assistance, with over a quarter designated as ‘least developed.’ These nations face considerable challenges related to malnutrition, manifesting not only in widespread anaemia among women of reproductive age but also in rising rates of overweight and obesity. SIDS Governments have committed to increasing the local production and consumption of nutritious food as a way of increasing food security and sovereignty and addressing the high burden of malnutrition-related morbidity and mortality. This proposal is intended to add to the evidence base and research capacity to support these policy commitments.

The proposal builds on development work undertaken in partnership with the Universities of the South Pacific and West Indies in two SIDS: Fiji and St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) respectively. The project will co-create community-based interventions to improve local food production and consumption with two NGOs and evaluate their impacts on household nutrition and household expenditures. The design of the interventions will be informed by preliminary work that identifies and appraises available evidence on current dietary intakes in those settings, and the nutritional value of locally produced foods.

In addition, to the full development and testing of interventions in Fiji and SVG, new work will be undertaken in Haiti. In Haiti, available dietary and nutritional evidence will also be collated and appraised, and stakeholders engaged in mapping the food system. This work will inform the design of an intervention ready for further rollout and evaluation.