Independent Expert Group

Anushree Rao is Senior Policy Officer at Concern Worldwide (UK). She focuses on mobilising greater political will, improved and accountable investments, and more robust and impactful policies and programmes to address malnutrition in the most vulnerable groups in high-burden countries. To this end she works closely with civil society coalitions. She also engages with parliamentarians and donors to inform and influence important decisions for nutrition on the global development agenda. Anushree has experience of implementing nutrition programmes and of research on maternal and child health and nutrition in Asia and Africa. She sits on the steering group of the SUN Civil Society Network.

Dr Ashkan Afshin is an Assistant Professor of Global Health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. He leads the Global Burden of Disease Study Nutrition Group and supervises the effort to estimate the disease burden attributable to dietary risk factors and obesity in 195 countries. Before joining IHME, Dr Afshin completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Epidemiology at Tufts University. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is a physician and epidemiologist with formal training and experience in health policy, population health, decision sciences, public health informatics and health economics.

Camilla is a medical doctor and epidemiologist trained in nutrition. Her primary interest is human growth and development and the early prevention of obesity and non-communicable chronic diseases. Camilla coordinates the Center for Research in Food Environments and Nutrition-Related Chronic Diseases (CIAPEC) at the University of Chile. CIAPEC runs longitudinal studies during key periods of life with the aim of better understanding the emergence of nutrition-related chronic diseases such as obesity, metabolic diseases and breast cancer in the context of a post-transitional country. Camilla is also advisor for several governmental agencies involved in infant policies such as the nutrition department of the Ministry of Health, Chile.

Carmel has worked in nutrition since the 1980s, having established large-scale treatment and prevention programmes during the Ethiopian famine, and implemented a multi-sectoral and integrated development programme for tackling maternal and child undernutrition. Carmel went on to establish a specialist consultancy group and has worked in numerous settings supporting national nutrition policy and strategy development, and undertaking large-scale nutrition programme evaluations and reviews. She became a Technical Director at the UK-based Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN) in 2011. Carmel’s technical focus areas at ENN include co-coordinating work on the relationship between wasting and stunting. Carmel established and co-edits the ENN publication Nutrition Exchange.

Chika Hayashi is the Senior Advisor for Nutrition Monitoring and Statistics at UNICEF. She has spent 20 years at the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the World Bank working on monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities including questionnaire development, data analyses, indicator development, target-setting and information system review. Chika has provided technical support in more than 20 countries, and developed numerous international M&E guidelines and global reports on health systems, maternal and child health, HIV and nutrition. Her areas of interest are to improve and expand data collection, the quality and use of nutrition information including better standardisation, and use of administrative data sources.

Dr Cynthia Rosenzweig is Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where she heads the Climate Impacts Group, which investigates the interactions of climate on systems and sectors important to human well-being. She is co-founder of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP). She is now spearheading the AgMIP-coordinated global and regional assessments of the effects of climate change on the food system, including on nutrition, for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report. Dr Rosenzweig is lead author on the food security chapter of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land.

Dominic Schofield is President of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) Canada and Senior Technical Advisor for Policy and Programs at GAIN. His work in public health focuses on addressing malnutrition in developing countries through global initiatives and multi-sectoral alliances that combine the strengths of government, private sector and civil society. Through GAIN, Dominic advises governments and businesses on evidence-based policies and blended finance approaches that take innovations with social impact to scale. He advises the FTSE for Good Index Policy Committee, the Access to Nutrition Index and serves on global technical expert committees related to nutrition and public health.

Jane Battersby is a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Cities, where she heads up the Centre’s food cluster. She has worked on issues such as urban food systems, food systems transformation and urban food governance in Africa since 2008. Most recently this has been as Research Coordinator of the Consuming Urban Poverty project and PI of the Nourishing Spaces Project. Jane has worked in a range of consultancy and advisory roles for international agencies, and local and national governments. She is currently the Premio Daniel Carasso, an award granted to acknowledge outstanding scientific research into sustainable food systems and diets for long-term health.

Jessica Fanzo, PhD is Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor of Global Food and Agriculture Policy and Ethics at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University in the USA. She also serves as the Director of Hopkins’ Global Food Policy and Ethics Programme. From 2017 to 2019, Jessica served as Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report and the UN High Level Panel of Experts on Food Systems and Nutrition. She has also held positions at Columbia University, The Earth Institute, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Food Programme, Biodiversity International, and the Millennium Development Goal Centre at the World Agroforestry Center in Kenya. Jessica has a PhD in Nutrition from The University of Arizona.

John W McArthur is a Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development programme. He is Senior Advisor on sustainable development to the UN Foundation and board governor with the International Development Research Centre Canada. He has previously been the CEO of Millennium Promise, a Senior Fellow with the Hong Kong-based Fung Global Institute, a faculty member at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and Policy Director at the Earth Institute. John co-chaired the International Commission on Education for Sustainable Development Practice and co-founded the global network of Masters in Development Practice degree programmes.

Jorge Fonseca is Food Systems Programme Adviser with the Food and Agriculture Organization, where he leads global work on city-linked food systems. He has acted as an international expert for diverse development country programmes. Jorge has been hired by the private sector to consult for multiple enterprises in nine different countries. He was a visiting faculty member at the University of Campinas in Brazil and has been the instructor of food system courses in different universities in Latin America and Italy. Jorge has authored over 150 scientific and trade-technical publications about post-production food systems, with one receiving a US national press award.

Dr Kevin Chen is Senior Research Fellow and Head of East Asia and Central Asia Office at the International Food Policy Research Institute. He is Co-Editor of the China Agricultural Economic Review and Managing Editor of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review. He was an Associate Professor at the Department of Resource Economics and Sociology at the University of Alberta from 1995–2004. He also served as an editor for the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics in 2003–2004. His interests focus on agri-food value chain development, public policies on poverty, modeling agricultural markets and South–South cooperation on agriculture.

Laurence M Grummer-Strawn is Coordinator of Infant and Young Child Feeding at WHO, where he leads the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, the Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and the Breastfeeding Advocacy Initiative. He is an epidemiologist who has published over 150 scientific publications. Dr Grummer-Strawn is recognised internationally for his work on vitamin and mineral deficiencies, breastfeeding policy and development of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the WHO growth charts. He created the CDC Guide to Breastfeeding Interventions, CDC’s collection of breastfeeding data in the National Immunization Survey and the State Breastfeeding Report Card.

Lorena Allemandi has worked in policy-oriented research to reduce non-communicable disease risk factors (tobacco control, obesity and hypertension) in Argentina for nine years. She was first involved in research and advocacy work focused on tobacco control that led to a number of publications and actions. She focuses on the link between scientific knowledge and the promotion of public health policies. Through her role as Director of the Food Policy Department of the Fundacion InterAmericana del Corazón Argentina, Lorena has participated in studies and advocacy strategies on sodium and trans-fatty acid, and childhood obesity. Lorena is in the Global Nutrition Report Independent Expert Group.

Mariachiara Di Cesare is Senior Lecturer in Public Health at Middlesex University and Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London. Her research focuses on the epidemiology and public health of obesity and undernutrition, the role of early nutrition on child development, whether and how much changes in metabolic risk factors have contributed to the decline in cardiovascular mortality, and how inequalities in non‐communicable diseases mortality vary within and between countries. Results of Chiara’s research on global trends in obesity are used by the WHO Global Health Observatory as official estimates and have been used to write several WHO/UN reports and received global media coverage.

Obey N Assery is an economist and Director of Coordination of Government Business at the Prime Minister’s Office, Tanzania. He ensures government activities are implemented coherently by convening government, development partners, private sector and civil society organisations. Obey coordinates food security and nutrition initiatives as a Scaling Up Nutrition focal person by ensuring that issues of food security and nutrition are well articulated in policies and strategies. He chairs the Partnership Accountability Committee, which serves as stakeholder’s platform for coordinating the G8 initiative on Food Security and Nutrition. Mr Assery is a seasoned speaker on food security and nutrition in international fora.

Dr Phillip Baker is an Alfred Deakin Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on the politics of food and nutrition policy; globalisation and food systems change; and policies to prevent undernutrition, overweight/obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases. His recent work has focused on understanding ‘political commitment’ for addressing malnutrition in all its forms – what drives it, how and under what circumstances; the role of ultra-processed foods in the nutrition transition; and the links between economic globalisation, food systems change and population nutrition. Dr Baker is a Fellow of the Lancet Commission on Obesity.

Dr Zulfiqar A Bhutta is the Inaugural Robert Harding Chair in Global Child Health at the Hospital for Sick Children, Co-Director and Director of Research at the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health, and the Founding Director of the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health at Aga Khan University. He is a leading voice for health professionals supporting integrated maternal, newborn and child health globally. Dr Bhutta leads large research groups based in Toronto, Karachi and Nairobi. His work with community health workers and outreach services has influenced integrated maternal and newborn outreach programmes for marginalised populations across the world.