Just desserts
Pair dedicated to improving availability of nutritious food wins worldwide prize
DES MOINES, IOWA The World Food Prize will be awarded this year to two men who have dedicated their careers to improving the availability of nutritious food for pregnant women and children in an effort to reduce the effects of malnutrition in developing countries.
Lawrence Haddad, a British economist and food policy researcher, and Dr. David Nabarro, who has worked with the World Health Organization and United Nations on health and hunger issues, were named the 2018 prize recipients this week at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington. Both will receive their prizes on Oct. 18 in Des Moines.
Haddad and Nabarro were recognized for their work to improve nutrition for mothers and children from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday — the most critical time for proper nutrition in a child’s development. Their leadership and advocacy is credited with helping to reduce the world’s number of children stunted from malnourishment between 2012 and 2017.
Haddad lives in England and is executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, a Swiss-based non-profit launched at the UN to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition.
He is credited with using economic and medical research to persuade development leaders to make child nutrition a priority.
Through combining science, politics and communication, Haddad managed to show leaders that improved nutrition can drive development.
“We really forged something that was compelling and hard to ignore. We said if you ignore nutrition, you’re ignoring development,” he said.
Nabarro, meanwhile, retired from the UN in 2017 and is now a professor at the Institute of Global Health Innovation in London’s Imperial College. His work over 17 years at the UN fluctuated between focusing on expanding nutrition programs to underdeveloped countries and tacking health crises including outbreaks of malaria, bird flu, Ebola and other diseases.
Through UN organizations — including the High Level Task Force on Global Food Security and the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement — he pulled together representatives from the UN, government agencies, donor groups and nongovernment organizations to help impress upon leaders in developing countries that children malnourished from the start suffer permanent damage that reduces their ability to reach their best potential, he said.
“Political leaders all over the world picked up on it and found that investing in early child development and early nutrition is a great investment in their national future,” Nabarro said.