Food Systems & Nutrition Analyst/ENHANCE Project Lead
Food Systems & Nutrition Analyst/ENHANCE Project Lead
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Job Description
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS
20 June 2025-23:59-GMT01:00 Central European Time (Rome)WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race colour national origin ethnic or social background genetic information gender gender identity and/or expression sexual orientation religion or belief HIV status or disability.
ABOUT WFP
The World Food Programme is the worlds largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict disasters and the impact of climate change.
At WFP people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse committed skilled and high performing teams selected on merit operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment living WFPs values (Integrity Collaboration Commitment Humanity and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.
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WHY JOIN WFP
WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
WFP offers a highly inclusive diverse and multicultural working environment.
WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training accreditation coaching mentorship and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.
A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country regional and global offices around the world and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.
We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).
JOB TITLE:
Food Systems & Nutrition Analyst/ENHANCE Project Lead
TYPE OF CONTRACT:
Consultant
UNIT/DIVISION:
Nutrition & Food Quality Service/ Programme Policy & Guidance Division
DUTY STATION (City Country):
HQ Rome Italy
DURATION:
4 months (05 September- 31 December 2025)
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:
The Nutrition & Food Quality Service leads WFPs efforts towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal target 2.2: ending all forms of malnutrition by 2030. This is an ambitious goal as malnutrition remains a universal and enormous global challenge with significant health and economic consequences to individuals communities and entire countries. WFP is therefore advancing its efforts to both prevent and treat malnutrition and has developed a situational assessment to support decision-making for the prevention of all forms of malnutrition: Fill the Nutrient Gap (FNG).
Improved nutrition situation analysis can increase the understanding of the likely magnitude and main causes of the nutrient gap among a particular target group e.g. children aged 6-23 months or pregnant and breastfeed women and girls and adolescent girls in a specific context. It can also inform where transformative change needs to happen in the food system to improve diets. The FNG analysis is based on a better and more in-depth analysis of existing nutrition dietary intake food security food prices household food expenditure and socio-economic data.
Starting in 2015 WFP with technical input from key research institutes (University of California Davis IFPRI Epicentre Mahidol Harvard) and Save the Children and UNICEF developed the FNG assessment which aims to strengthen analysis build consensus and support decision-making for improving nutrient intake and preventing malnutrition including during the critical period of the first 1000 days. The FNG uses nutrition modelling (now using the WFP Enhance analytical platform) combined with a review of secondary data on food systems local dietary practices and malnutrition to identify options that enable people to access and choose a more healthy and nutritious diet.
The analysis is designed to contribute to national policy and programming planning cycles by highlighting potential entry points for nutrition-related action by different sectors and actors. Key stakeholders are engaged throughout the processed as needed particularly in analysis and utilization of the findings to facilitate multi-stakeholder discussions on the identification of context-specific policy and programme options and prioritisation of actions. The FNG process and the data analysis are facilitated and in parts led by the Systems Analysis for Nutrition team at WFP Headquarters (HQ) in collaboration with WFP Country Offices (CO) and Regional Offices (RO).
The FNG assessments concept and methods are well established and the analysis has been conducted in more than 50 countries including in fragile settings. WFP is working closely with World Bank IFPRI UC Davis Johns Hopkins Tilburg University Capgemini and others on further developments of the FNG including capacity strengthening costing of options and aligning FNG with other initiatives such as estimating the cost of a healthy diet assessing environmental impact of diets as well as impact of climate change on diets and characterizing sub-national food environments using market-based food price data collection.
The consultant will support upcoming FNG analyses as needed including technical oversight support and guidance of members of the SAN team COs and external partners as they continue to use cost of diet analyses in Enhance for design of food/cash assistance and inform strategic discussions. The consultant will continue to lead the development of Enhance testing and building capacity of WFP and external users to undertake analysis in Enhance and support integration of environmental considerations in Enhance analyses. The consultant will collaborate with internal and external focal points to harmonize use of food composition data across WFP tools. Lastly there will be a need for scientific writing to seize publication opportunities and divulge the potential applications of the Enhance platform to inform policies and programming in order to strengthen food systems for nutrition and the sustainable diets.
ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:
Lead Co-Lead and provide technical support on FNG and Enhance analyses
- Lead co-lead or provide technical support to FNG processes and analysis in Enhance including support and guidance to SAN team members as well as CO and RO colleagues.
- Support or conduct scoping of analyses including what processes the analysis will inform identify data sources (market prices income/expenditure household composition and size) plan analytical process including food price primary data collection when needed and prepare for the handover of the findings and recommendations for action including identification of the stakeholders that need to be specifically targeted with the findings.
- Contribute to the definition of roles and responsibilities on FNG analyses between SAN team CO RO technical partner(s) in-country.
- Desk-based research to gather and review secondary data and information sources relevant to FNG analysis (malnutrition characteristics availability and access to food and nutrients nutrient intake qualitative information on barriers to nutrient intake and influencers of dietary practices for key target groups affordability and cost of diet).
- Conduct or provide support diet cost analysis in Enhance in coordination with ROs including affordability analyses and intervention modelling.
- Support CO in technical discussions with key government counterparts and other stakeholders with regard to the analysis (including selection of what to model interpretation of findings etc). As a higher-level team member the consultant will facilitate technical discussions with stakeholders from multiple sectors. The facilitation will be conducted independently when needed.
- Support on behalf of SAN team CO and RO in planning and conducting inception validation recommendation development workshops and in the final dissemination of findings.
- Lead and co-lead the writing of the country FNG reports including support to other team members in quantitative analyses and their writing of full reports summary reports and policy briefs.
- Support CO in the development of advocacy material with key messages derived from the nutrition situation analysis and the recommendation of context-specific strategies for food social protection and education system actions to fill nutrient gaps in key target groups.
Contribute to further strengthening FNG concept and development of the Enhance platform and new approaches/techniques for FNG analyses
- Work closely with Capgemini Reckon Digital and other experts as needed to advance development of the Enhance platform including coordinating all development and project activities ensuring refinement of the of multi-objective functionalities visualization of results and a new graphical user interface.
- Contribute to the continued development and testing of a new approach as part of the project Enhance linking environmental impact climate change as part of nutrition and food systems analyses within the FNG. This includes a new component in FNG analyses on the environmental impact of diets and utilizing multi-objective optimization to investigate trade-offs and explore strategies to remain within planetary boundaries as well as support and oversight to other team members supporting the development process.
- Represent SAN in meetings within the division as well as development partners for the diet and climate work.
- Present the Enhance project and FNGs work to partners and discuss collaborations including with academia and donors.
- Develop content for peer-reviewed publications articles reports and other types of dissemination materials on Enhance and FNG.
- Participate in international conferences and/or technical meetings representing WFP on FNG-related issues when needed.
Capacity building to WFP and partners on linear programming Enhance and partnership strengthening related to Enhance
- In coordination with other team members lead the methodology development for Enhance and support capacity building for Enhance within the team and of partners. Develop and deliver in-person and virtual training modules on the application of the Enhance tool as part of the FNG analysis and training on food price data collection from markets as needed.
- Keep team members and user updated on the Enhance platform and climate and diet nexus developments and introduce them to new tools and analytical approaches as applicable.
- Develop capacity building training packages and train internal and external technical teams at different levels (WFP government and development partners research partners etc.) on Enhance as required including ensuring quality assurance and quality control to trained teams.
- Support the Nutrition & Food Quality Service RO s and COs in the use of cost of diet and nutrition analytical tools as needed.
DELIVERABLES AT THE END OF THE CONTRACT:
Related to FNG analyses
- Full final report summary and slide deck for each FNG country. If required ad hoc thematic papers on FNG in specific countries as agreed with CO and other national stakeholders.
- Draft advocacy material summarizing the key messages derived from the FNG analysis to be used by the CO for further policy discussions with their government counterparts as needed.
- Support FNG analyses with analytical quality assurance and technical support as needed and agreed.
Related to further strengthening FNG concept and dissemination
- Draft of manual for Enhance and update FNG protocol
- Peer reviewed articles reports and other documents and contributions submitted for publication and presentations in international conferences fora technical meetings as needed.
- Launch of Enhance version 2 for external users
Related to capacity building to WFP and partners and partnership strengthening on Enhance
- Training modules on Enhance use as part of FNG analysis developed and updated when needed
- Training and technical assistance provided to SAN team WFP COs/ROs and other partners on the use of linear programming (Enhance) within FNG and diet cost analyses
- Support the Nutrition & Food Quality Service ROs and COs in the use of analytical tools as needed
QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:
Education:
Graduate level (Masters or above) in Public Health (Epidemiology or biostatistics) Nutrition Economics (Econometrics) Sustainable food systems Agronomy Statistics or other socio-economic disciplines with a strong quantitative data analysis component.
Experience:
Has at least 8 years of relevant professional experience with at least 5 years of experience in food and nutrition data analysis.
Solid knowledge on nutrition and food security required.
Experience with linear programming (Cost of the Diet/Enhance) considered an asset.
Previous experience in database management appreciated.
Worked in low-middle income countries.
Knowledge & Skills:
Comfortable to conduct quantitative data analysis based on secondary data using statistical software (SPSS Stata SAS R or other). Advanced expertise in Excel
Good ability to conduct literature review and identify key themes
Experience with qualitative research methods an asset
Proven ability to structure and manage processes required.
Capacity to coordinate with a range of different stakeholders including national governments research institutions private sector NGO partners among others.
Good interpersonal skills and ability to work in multicultural setting.
Flexibility in thinking ability to adapt to different situations quickly and with ease.
Ability to work with and as part of a team and structure work with little input.
Training and facilitation skills appreciated.
Languages:
Professional level of written and spoken English. Knowledge of another UN language (French or Spanish) an asset.
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REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION
WFP is committed to supporting individuals with disabilities by providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process. If you require a reasonable accommodation please contact:
NO FEE DISCLAIMER
The United Nations does not charge any application processing training interviewing testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Should you receive a solicitation for the payment of a fee please disregard it. Furthermore please note that emblems logos names and addresses are easily copied and reproduced. Therefore you are advised to apply particular care when submitting personal information on the web.
REMINDERS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION
We strongly recommend that your profile is accurate complete and includes your employment records academic qualifications language skills and UN Grade (if applicable).
Once your profile is completed please apply and submit your application.
Please make sure you upload your professional CV in the English language
Kindly note the only documents you will need to submit at this time are your CV and Cover Letter
Additional documents such as passport recommendation letters academic certificates etc. may potentially be requested at a future time
Please contact us at in case you face any challenges with submitting your application
Only shortlisted candidates will be notified
All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs job requirements merit and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse all forms of discrimination any kind of harassment sexual harassment and abuse of authority. Therefore all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.
No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) FAO Finance Committee WFP External Auditor WFP Audit Committee Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.
Required Experience:
Senior IC
Employment Type
Full-Time
