"Guiding USAID toward more effective food assistance for nutrition impacts, results from the Food Aid Quality Review (FAQR) field studies"
Abstract
Since 2009 the Food Aid Quality Review (FAQR) has sought to provide the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Food for Peace (FFP) and its partners with actionable recommendations on ways to improve nutrition among vulnerable people for whom the direct distribution of food aid can make a significant impact.
As part of FAQR three field studies have been conducted to test two major recommendations to improve the nutritional effectiveness of the food: adding an animal source protein to the standard formulation of corn-soy porridge and increasing the amount of oil in the final ration. FAQR was asked to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these recommendations in the field, producing purpose driven research to inform evidence-based policy.
This presentation will provide an overview of the three FAQR field studies in Malawi, Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone, summarize key results, and outline the potential programmatic and policy impacts of these findings.
Speaker Biographies
Bea Rogers, Co-Principal Investigator
Dr. Rogers is Professor of Economics and Food Policy and Director of the Food and Nutrition Policy and Programs at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, where she has been on the faculty since 1982. Prof. Rogers has over 30 years of experience promoting evidence-based policy and programs related to food security, food consumption, and nutrition in the developing world. She has been responsible for the design and implementation of national household income, expenditure, and consumption surveys in several countries, and has conducted many smaller scale surveys of household economic and consumption behaviors looking at the determinants of intra-household resource allocation and the effects of food price subsidies and agricultural policies on food consumption and nutrition. She has worked on estimating cost- effectiveness in food assistance programs in Ethiopia and Malawi. She recently served as PI of a study that focuses on how the effects of food aid programs can be made sustainable after the programs are closed (a 4 year, 4-country study). In addition to her work on the Food Aid Quality Review, she is working on a project to improve dietary data collection methods and promote the use of such data in policy-making.
Ilana Cliffer, FAQR Burkina Faso Field Research Director
Ilana is a PhD Student in Food and Nutrition Policy and Programs at the Friedman School. She holds a MPH in Global Health from Emory University, and a B.S. in Neuroscience from the College of William and Mary. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Burkina Faso from 2008-2010, and has previously worked for CARE, the CDC, and the Carter Center.