Individual Contractor- Engaging business and revert its negative impacts to prevent children and adolescents’ overweight and obesity in LAC - Panama, 11.5 months (Remote/Home-Based)

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UNICEF - United Nations Children's Fund

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Home-based; Panama City (Panama)

Consultant Communications & PR Medical & Health Programme & Policy

Application deadline 1 year ago: Monday 25 Jul 2022 at 03:55 UTC

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UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. UNICEF promotes the rights and welfare of all children and adolescents in everything we do, especially focusing our efforts on reaching the most vulnerable and excluded, worldwide.

And we never give up.

For every child, care

The UNICEF Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office is based in in Panama, operating in 36 territories, including 24 country offices. UNICEF works to put the rights and well-being of the most disadvantaged children at the heart of the social, political, and economic agenda, in line with our equity focus, working across our organization and with our partners in government, civil society and the private sector to support shifts in public policy, fuel social engagement, and increase investment for children. For more information about UNICEF and its work. (www.unicef.org/lac)..)

The prevalence of overweight, including obesity among children and adolescents, is increasing almost everywhere; and now afflicts both urban and rural poor children and is increasing most rapidly in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs). Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) faces some of the highest rates of childhood overweight in the world and is one of the regions where UNICEF and partners are working most actively on the prevention agenda. Compared to the world average of 5.6 per cent, 7.5 per cent of children under five in the region have overweight; this represents 4 million children of preschool age. The situation is worse among older children. Around 30 per cent of 5-19-year-olds living in the LAC region are now estimated to be affected by overweight and obesity, far higher than the world average of 18 per cent.

The drivers of the overweight epidemic are multiple and complex. However, a large body of evidence suggests that changes to food environments are the major drivers of the rise of overweight during the past forty years. People’s food environments can be very different depending on the availability, affordability, marketing promotion and product properties of different foods. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has further undermined access to healthy diets, physical activity and has deepened the inequality gap.

In many LMIC, obesity coexists with undernutrition (including energy, and macro and micronutrient deficiencies) leading to a “double burden of malnutrition” occurring across the life-course of individuals and coexisting in the same households and districts. There is a complex interplay between early undernutrition (in mothers before and during pregnancy, and suboptimal infant feeding practices in early childhood) and later over nutrition that exacerbates the risk of NCDs. Therefore, focus should be given to the so-called “double duty action” for the prevention of both undernutrition and overweight and improving the healthiness of day-to-day food environments. In this sense, UNICEF’s response follows a fully multidimensional approach that addresses all forms of malnutrition, including both undernutrition and overweight and obesity. With the launch of the UNICEF Programming Guidance on the Prevention of Overweight and Obesity in Children and Adolescents, UNICEF regional offices and country offices are scaling up their programming work on overweight and obesity, combining double duty interventions that address all forms of malnutrition with overweight specific actions and regulations.

In a changing world, where food systems and environments have changed, consumers have little influence over their environment, but policymakers can introduce and/or strengthen policies to overcome aspects that promote unhealthy dietary patterns and contribute to a more enabling environment where children can thrive and reach their full potential.

Overweight affects children’s health with physical, mental, and social effects. Childhood overweight increases the risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes type 2 at early stages of life and in adulthood. At the societal level, overweight and obesity result in major financial and social burdens for LMICs.

UNICEF Regional office of Latin America and The Caribbean (LACRO) has been developing a new research and advocacy agenda on the role of business, and the marketing of food and beverage, in the growth of overweight and obesity rates across the region. It’s is now clear that the role of the environment is key in nutrition habits and lifestyles of children and adolescents, and the role of business in this environment is salient.

To halt the rise of childhood overweight in the region, UNICEF LACRO has been working on generating evidence and advocating on the negative impacts of the environment including the role of the private sector. In this sense, 2 key work streams are undergoing:

• Generate and disseminate evidence on the drivers, consequences, and promising solution to child overweight in low and middle-income countries.

• Design and implementation of advocacy effort to change the narrative on child overweight and obesity and secure political, legal, financial, and public frameworks for effective prevention measures and supportive environments.

How can you make a difference?

Under the shared supervision of the Corporate Alliances Specialist and of the Nutrition Specialist, and in collaboration with other teams in the office (Communications, Social & Behavior Change, PFP), the individual contractor will be asked to supervise and coordinate key initiatives:

1. Contribute to actions aiming to limit the negative impacts of obesogenic environments on children, through evidence generation, advocacy, and regulatory frameworks.

2. Support the development of healthy urban environment for children in coordination/collaboration with UNICEF Country Offices, the city mayors in the region and other key stakeholders.

3. Explore collaboration with relevant actors from the private sector, academia, civil society, and others, to promote a healthy nutrition and lifestyle for children.

4. Support the dissemination and advocacy of a new narrative on children overweight and obesity, from and induvial perspective towards an environment one, by understanding and evolving social norms and behaviors.

Provide technical support for the promotion of the child overweight and obesity prevention agenda at regional level and country level.

Specific Tasks:

The Individual contractor will be expected to develop, the first weeks of the consultancy, a detailed workplan for the duration of the contract, in line with the main objectives. We detail here a few of the suggested actions for each one of the key initiatives.

1. Contribute to actions aiming to limit the negative impacts of obesogenic environments on children, through evidence generation, dissemination, and advocacy

The contractor will be expected to continue the work of the regional office and support country offices in leveling up the work on regulation of obesogenic environment, on marketing of unhealthy food of beverages, including front-of-packlabelling, tax, digital marketing, retail settings, etc. The individual contractor will actively support the country offices colleagues to help them identify the best advocacy strategies to reach their goal, and eventually progress towards a region with strong levels of regulation of each one of the relevant factors of negative influence on child nutrition. This includes collaboration and planning of activities (workshops, events, etc.) to support dissemination of results and the advocacy agenda.

2. Support the development of healthy urban environment for children in coordination/collaboration with UNICEF Country Offices, the city mayors in the region and other key stakeholders

The contractor will be expected to build upon the first 2 pilots developed with Mexico City and Santiago de Chile, to disseminate recommendations for urban spaces to improve children health and nutrition, by engaging with city major main networks in the region, supporting country offices colleagues in doing it as well, and disseminating UNICEF vision for healthy urban settings in key events and advocacy spaces in the region.

3. Explore collaboration with relevant actors from the private sector, academia, civil society, and others, to promote a healthy nutrition and lifestyle for children.

The contractor will help the regional office, and country offices colleagues, in collaboration with the Health & Nutrition and with the Corporate Partnership and Philanthropy teams, to explore potential partnership with the private sector and major donors to promote healthy nutrition and lifestyle for children. These potential collaborations will explore the whole range of modalities of support the private sector can bring, including using the power of advocacy, core business, business practices and funding from companies and foundations.

Together with the team of Health and Nutrition, the consultant will, by leveraging the insights from the recent internal study on Social Norms around diet and body image in LAC, help develop a workplan to promote a change in social norms and behaviors and contribute to improving perception and actions allowing the development of healthy environments for children in the region. In collaboration with communications area, also provide technical support for the development of communication material, policy briefs, guidelines or other specific activities related to the advocacy agenda.

5. Provide technical support for the promotion the child overweight and obesity prevention agenda at regional level and country level

The contractor will the first entry point for colleagues of Country Offices from the areas of Nutrition, Health, but also PFP, CRB, communication and SBC, in the areas of work included in the scope of the consultancy, including the coordination of the bi-monthly transversal meeting on “Nutrition & business” and the monthly monitoring and update of the knowledge exchange platform on overweight and obesity prevention.

Expected Results:

Prioritized COs are knowledgeable on the negative impacts of F&B and developing concrete strategies to revert these.
At least 2 more cities are engaged, and UNICEF presented its strategies for cities to 2 urban authorities’ networks and in 2 key events on the region.
A clear roadmap has been developed to engage the private sector, the academia, and the civil society for promoting healthy nutrition and lifestyle for children, and ideally some partnerships have been celebrated with few companies in the region / COs.
Together with Nutrition, CRB, and SBC areas, a clear plan has been developed to support a change social norms and behaviors strategy around diet and body image in LAC, and this strategy is being developed by the end of the consultancy.
Six bi-monthly network meeting coordinated.

Deliverables

Description

Duration [in days]

Expected deadline

Elaboration of Workplan for the period of the contract.