Organizational Setting
FAO's Food and Nutrition Division (ESN) provides technical expertise and normative guidance to support Members' actions to improve access to and consumption of healthy diets to raise levels of nutrition. Priorities include the generation and consolidation of data and evidence for decision-making, the development and mobilization of up-to-date guidance and guidelines across a variety of relevant topics, and the integration of nutrition into agrifood systems policies and actions from production, through value chain and market initiatives to consumers.
This position is located in the Food and Nutrition Division, at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy.
Reporting Lines
The Nutrition and Food Systems Officer (Healthy Diet Metrics and Analytics) reports to the Senior Nutrition and Systems Officer, ESN, and works in close collaboration with colleagues in the Statistics Division (ESS) under the overall guidance of the Director, ESN.
Technical Focus
The aim of ESN's work on healthy diet metrics and analytics is to enable Members and interested organizations to generate and use healthy diet metrics for decision-making, monitoring and evaluating policy and programmatic actions aimed at increasing access to and consumption of healthy diets, and for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) reporting, being ESN custodian of the minimum dietary diversity for women (MDD-W), SDG2 indicator. The technical expertise of this role provides analytical support including data compilation, analysis and reporting, as well as advancing the development, validation and utilization of healthy diet metrics and related guidance, in collaboration with other UN Agencies and partners. The incumbent will also support integrating diet quality metrics into FAO data platforms and flagship reports to facilitate wide dissemination and use of such information in policy and programme decisions.
Key Results
Research and analysis of information, data and statistics, and the maintenance and updating of related tools, methodologies, and/or databases to support the delivery of programme products, projects, publications, and services.
Key Functions
Researches and analyses [agricultural, economic, trade, market, social, environmental, nutrition/food composition and/or gender related] data, statistics and information to provide technical, statistical and/or policy related information and analysis to support the delivery of economic and social development programmes work, products, projects, publications and services.
Produces a variety of technical reports and input for technical documents, divisional publications and/or web pages.
Provides technical, statistical, and/or analytical services on various studies, projects, and/or assessments and provides technical backstopping to field projects.
Participates in the development of improved/updated technical, statistical and/or analytical tools, methodologies, systems, databases, and/or key social/ economic/ environmental/ nutritional and/or early warning indicators, etc.
Participates in multidisciplinary teams, collaborates with other Divisions, Offices and Centres and agencies on work groups and committees and promotes best practices.
Collaborates in capacity development activities involving the planning and organizing of training workshops, seminars, and major meetings and the preparation of related information, materials, on-line tools and information kits.
Promotes knowledge sharing and best practices at international meetings and conferences and influences partners in stakeholder consultations.
Participates in resource mobilization activities.
Specific Functions
Provides support for the gathering and analysis of dietary data to generate and quality-assure diet quality metrics for use in FAO's programmatic activities.
Prepares and implements, in collaboration with the Statistics Division, a concrete mechanism for gathering and analysing national data to facilitate routine global reporting of MDD-W by countries.
Implements the validation exercise with countries to confirm national estimates on MDD-W.
In collaboration with the Statistics Division, analyses, stores, quality-assures, consolidates and generates reports for the SDG2 reporting of MDD-W.
Contributes to the design and implementation of capacity development activities in support of the utilization of MDD-W as an SDG2 indicator for global monitoring.
Performs similar tasks for emerging healthy diet metrics.
Contributes to the continual advancement of the development and validation of healthy diet metrics, in collaboration with other UN agencies and technical experts.
Consolidates data on healthy diet metrics for FAO's reports, providing analytical support, generating data sets, visuals, written text and related materials as needed.
Contributes written content to publications, including manuscripts and reports, especially in relation to describing statistical methods and interpreting and drawing inferences from dietary statistics.
Provides support for integrating diet quality metrics into FAO data platforms and flagship reports to facilitate wide dissemination and use of such information in policy and programme decisions.
Participates in internal meetings at FAO and with external partners and contributes to technical discussions in relation to the specific tasks.
Performs related duties as required.
CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING
Minimum Requirements
Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in nutritional epidemiology, nutritional sciences, applied human nutrition, biostatistics with nutrition focus or a related field.
Five years of relevant experience in analysing large datasets relevant for dietary intake and diet quality metrics.
Working knowledge (proficiency - level C) of English and intermediate knowledge (intermediate proficiency - level B) of another official FAO language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish).
Competencies
Results Focus
Teamwork
Communication
Building Effective Relationships