Scientist – Community Nutritionist / Public Health Specialist

The Position: ICRISAT is seeking a globally recruited staff who is highly motivated and qualified Community Nutritionist/ Public Health Specialist to lead and implement project activities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The ideal candidate should be an expert with considerable experience in community nutrition and/or public health and with a passion to leverage the potential of grain legumes, dryland cereals and oil seed crops to promote nutri-sensitive “Food Systems Transformation” towards improving the quality of people’s diets/dietary diversity and health.

The candidate should be willing to work at all global locations of ICRISAT. The incumbent will contribute to the design of innovative and multisectoral interventions that lead to nutrition outcomes and will be part of ICRISAT’s Global Research Program – Enabling Systems Transformation. The incumbent will report functionally to the Program Director based in Hyderabad, India. The position will be based in one of ICRISAT’s country offices viz: Nairobi, (Kenya), Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) or Lilongwe (Malawi) with the incumbent reporting administratively to ICRISAT’s Regional Director for Africa based in Nairobi, Kenya.

ICRISAT is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world. Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi- arid or dryland tropics has over 2 billion people and 644 million of these are the poorest of the poor. ICRISAT and its partners help empower these disadvantaged populations to overcome poverty, hunger and a degraded environment through better agricultural production systems.ICRISAT is headquartered at Patancheru near Hyderabad, India, with two regional hubs and eight country offices in sub-Saharan Africa. ICRISAT envisions a prosperous, food-secure and resilient dryland tropics. Its mission is to reduce poverty, hunger, malnutrition and environmental degradation in the dryland tropics.

ICRISAT conducts research on its mandate crops of chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut, sorghum, pearl millet and finger millet in the arid and semi-arid tropics. The Institute focuses its work on the drylands and in protecting the environment. Tropical dryland areas are usually seen as resource-poor and perennially beset by shocks such as drought, thereby trapping dryland communities in poverty and hunger and making them dependent on external aid. Please visit – www.icrisat.org

Duties and Responsibilities:

· Bring a community nutrition/public health lens to nutri-sensitive “Food Systems Transformation” approach applied by ICRISAT in project development, planning, and implementation.

· Provide support on technical issues related to health (i.e., malnutrition, anemia, lifestyle diseases etc.), nutrition, dietary behavior, agri-food environments towards promoting nutri-sensitive Food Systems /value chains, globally.

· Design and undertake dietary and nutrition assessments using mixed methods to support development of nutrition-specific/sensitive agricultural interventions for improving household diet quality and nutrition especially for women and children.

· Conduct research on issues associated with increasing consumption of grain legumes and dryland cereals, food and nutrition, dietary quality and dietary diversity.

· Implement community-based initiatives to increase awareness on linkages between agriculture, nutrition, hygiene, and health with emphasis on production, processing/cooking and consumption of safe and nutritious grain legumes, dryland cereals and oil seeds crops and other foods.

· Contribute to develop and implement monitoring/nutritional assessment (i.e., baseline, midline, endline anthropometry studies) and evaluation plans, sampling and study design, and analytical protocols for nutrition-specific/sensitive agricultural interventions.

· Closely collaborate with project partners to set up a behavior change communication (BCC) team in planning, implementing, and monitoring of nutrition activities and interventions.

· Contribute to research, and develop standards and guidelines for food safety and hygiene to ensure safety and hygiene across: production, transportation, storage and handling of raw materials and cooked/processed products, from the human health aspect.

· Develop, maintain and strengthen partnerships for research and development in agriculture, food and nutrition, postharvest and gender and youth programming aspects, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

· Contribute to the development of survey materials/ focus group discussions (FGDs), training materials, tools and facilitate capacity building on nutrition and improving household dietary diversity and resilience.

· Contribute to ICRISAT’s knowledge sharing and capacity strengthening activities with respect to ICRISAT’s ”Nutrition, Dietary Behavior and Smart Food” cluster initiatives, especially in SubSaharan Africa.

· Assist the Global Research Program Director – Enabling Systems Transformation, Regional Director, East and Southern Africa and Institute’s Leadership to mobilize new financial resources by way of externally funded nutrition related projects to sustain the Institute’s activities globally.

· Facilitate other ICRISAT scientists, project partners as well as donors and development partner visits to project sites.

· Build technical capacity in local communities to assist target project districts in developing an approach to guide the implementation of nutrition interventions. Mentor NARS, NGO scaling partner staff, and student interns in relevant areas of community nutrition research.

· Assist in writing high-quality peer reviewed articles and publish in high impact factor publications; Develop productive partnerships to further ICRISAT’s “Nutrition, Dietary Diversity and Smart Food” cluster” and its 3 Global Research Programs and actively participate in regional and international nutrition and health research communities and networks.

· Perform other related duties as assigned by the Cluster Leader for “Nutrition, Dietary Diversity and Smart Food” and immediate functional Supervisor.

Program Specific Skills: 

· Proven ability in using nutrition R&D tools and study designs to generate evidence for public health nutrition research and apply evidence-based nutrition interventions.

· Proven experience in quantitative and qualitative data collection, computation, and statistical analysis, preferably with a research and development organization implementing integrated agriculture-nutrition-health related projects.

· Knowledge and proven experience on undertaking anthropometric studies in children under 5 years old, as per WHO recommendations: organization of an anthropometric survey, field work procedures, data processing, quality assessment, analysis, and reporting, will be an added advantage.

· A good track record in achieving impact and producing high quality technical reports/publications.

· Experience in networking with multiple project partners in the field of nutrition and health. Ability to speak and write English fluently, with very good working knowledge of French will be desirable.

· A self-starter and ability to plan and work independently with minimal supervision.

· Possess demonstrated strategic thinking and time management skills.

· Excellent interpersonal skills and be able to work as a member of an interdisciplinary team in a multi-cultural environment and should be able to interact effectively with project partners and service providers.

 Requirements:

· A PhD in community nutrition, public health, nutritional epidemiology, or related discipline from a recognized institution with a minimum of four (4) years working experience in international studies being desirable.

· At least five (5) years working experience in international agricultural or nutrition research with practical hands-on experience in community/public health etc. interventions.

· Experience in developing and implementing projects addressing malnutrition and anemia (especially among women and children in vulnerable communities) and lifestyle diseases through food/nutrition based approaches.

· Experience in ‘linking agriculture to nutrition and health’ is a distinct advantage.

· Experience in an international and multi-disciplinary/cultural environment is an asset.

General:

This is a contractual role for a period of 36 months (3 years’).

How to apply:

Applicants should apply on or before 10 November 2024, with their latest Resume, and the names and contact information of three references that are knowledgeable about their professional qualifications and work experience. All applications will be acknowledged; however, only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

ICRISAT is an equal opportunity employer