Food environments play a significant role in shaping food purchasing and consumption behaviors, affecting diets and nutrition. Assessing food environment dimensions like food availability, price, vendor, and product properties, and marketing and regulation, helps us understand how they influence food choices. However, global development partners lack food environment assessment tools that are designed or adapted for data collection in low- and middle-income (LMIC) country contexts.

To address this gap, USAID Advancing Nutrition conducted a pilot study in four LMICs to evaluate a package of seven food environment assessments for their functionality and suitability. Working through an iterative process in Liberia, Honduras, Nigeria, and Timor-Leste, USAID Advancing Nutrition documented the  experience of conducting the assessments and noted modifications to improve the assessment package. Findings will equip practitioners with refined and pilot-tested data collection tools to inform the design and implementation of market-based interventions within food systems to support healthy diets.

Join this webinar to hear from the activity team to learn more about the individual tools, and from a research partner about their experience piloting the assessments. This event will be available in English and Spanish. 

Webinar Recording

View webinar transcript (PDF, 313.21 KB)

Webinar Recording (Spanish)

Ver transcripción (PDF, 297.21 KB)

Speakers

• Sarah McClung is a technical advisor on the USAID Advancing Nutrition food systems team. In this role, Sarah works on activities to build evidence on how food systems programming can contribute to improved diets.  Sarah leads the food environment worksteam for the project that we will be hearing about today. Sarah has more than twelve years of experience in international program implementation and management in the areas of nutrition, agriculture, food systems, and nutrition governance. 
• Christopher Rue is a nutrition data advisor in the Center fo Nutrition in the USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security. His work focuses on advancing USAID's reporting, analysis, visualization, and use of nutrition data. He manages several activities related to monitoring, evaluation, and learning, including the USAID Advancing Nutrition workstream on food environment assessments. He also provides data tools to inform programming towards improved diets through food systems. 
• Teresa Warne is a consultant with USAID Advancing Nutrition, and is a project lead for the Center for American Indian and Rural Health Equity at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. Teresa works on various projects related to health disparities in Native and rural communities. Teresa’s research interests include health equity, food security, and sustainable food systems solutions to support socio-ecological systems. Teresa has worked on the USAID Advancing Nutrition food environment activity since 2021, providing leadership on data analysis.
• Pushpendra Mishra is the director of the Ipsos Africa Centre for Development Research and Evaluation. He is an accomplished international development professional with 17 years of experience in the health and development sectors, operating at both international and national levels. His expertise spans a wide range of studies, including formative research, impact evaluation, large-scale surveys, process evaluation, implementation research, and outcome monitoring. He has applied his skills in diverse fields such as maternal and child health, reproductive and sexual health, nutrition, financial inclusion, public expenditure review, sanitation, agriculture, livelihood, and education.
• Stephens Igho is a research manager with the Ipsos Africa Centre for Development Research and Evaluation. He is an international development professional with over 10 years of experience, specializing in research and evaluation. Stephens is passionate about delivering high quality research and evaluation that impacts policy decisions and generates evidence that strengthens development programs. He is very passionate about agriculture, nutrition and food based market systems.