Following a global consultation on June 2 for the 5th LCIRAH Annual Research Conference, the Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Academy  was formerly launched on June 3 in London for the world community of interdisciplinary researchers working on agriculture systems to improve nutrition and health.

The launch decision came after several meetings in Africa and Asia organised by the founding partners of the ANH Academy viz the Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health (LCIRAH), Innovative Methods and Metrics for Agriculture and Nutrition Actions (IMMANA) and the CGIAR Research Programme on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH).

Rationale for the founding of ANH Academy presented by Suneetha Kadiyala, LCIRAH, is to acknowledge the important role of agriculture and food systems as key drivers to reduce both the persistent under-nutrition and the growing burden of over nutrition. It also took into account the emerging problem of overweight and obesity and the associated non-communicable diseases that have increasingly burdened low and middle income countries.

The Academy also recognises the need for better and consistent application of available tools, development of new tools across disciplines, better quality and availability of data across subjects, as well as better understanding of mechanisms involved. It further recognises the need for incentives for multi-disciplinary research and multi-sectoral partnerships in this field.  

Activities envisaged for ANH Academy include convening annual conferences, working groups, training, mentoring and net working, as well as establishing and supporting online knowledge-sharing platforms.

The LANSA-LCIRAH link

LCIRAH, one of the founding partners of ANH Academy, is also one of LANSA’s principal partners, and LANSA is also in turn linked to A4NH of CGIAR. The LANSA Research Programme Consortium has the same broad objectives promoting nutrition-sensitive agriculture and food systems and is involved in leveraging agriculture to improve nutrition and health in the South Asian region, where the problem of poor nutrition related health is a major health burden.CEO of LANSA, Prakash Shetty’s short interview highlights the link between the Academy and LANSA.

Individual and group membership online is open, and members would be encouraged to be champions of interdisciplinary ‘network of networks’ and further the role in enhancing the evidence base research for the reduction and prevention of all forms of nutrition and related health issues that could be leveraged by influencing agriculture and food systems.  

At the launch, John McDermott of CGIAR’s A4NH said, the Academy would be an important platform to share innovative ideas, convene meetings of young researchers and be catalyse to inter-disciplinary discussions / webinars as well as generate important position papers.

Jeff Waage of LCIRAH, commended the last five LCIRAH annual conferences, and announced that the 2016 conference would go International – the first that ANH Academy would organised, in either Africa or Asia.