Keynote Speakers
Thursday 7th September, 11.30am, OLD 321
S. V. SUBRAMANIAN, Child Stunting: Lessons Learned, Future Directions
Abstract:
After a brief overview, this presentation will critique the current policy perspectives to addressing the burden of under-nutrition in India. Specifically, the basis for a) relying solely on macro-economic growth as a policy instrument, b) “single risk- factor” based approach, and c) the “maternal/child" perspective to addressing child under-nutrition will be questioned. The presentation will then propose future directions which include – learning from history, need for a structural and infrastructural approach, a focus on families/households and need to move beyond anthropometry to directly measuring “nutrition”.
Biography:
S (“Subu”) V Subramanian is a Professor of Population Health and Geography at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and a senior core faculty at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. He is also the founding director for an interdisciplinary PhD program in Population Health Sciences that is currently being developed at Harvard. He has published over 425 articles, book chapters, and books in the field of social and contextual determinants of health, health inequalities in India with a special emphasis on nutritional inequalities among children and adults, and applied multilevel statistical models. He has co-edited 2 books titled Global Perspectives on Social Capital and Health and Social Capital and Health.
Friday 8th September, 11.30am, OLD 321
JOHN HODDINOTT, Chronic Under-nutrition: Retrospect and Prospects
Abstract:
This lecture will focus on the current state knowledge regarding chronic under- nutrition in developing countries. Three themes will be discussed: (1) While there is good evidence on the broad drivers of under-nutrition, future work in this area is likely to have sharply diminishing returns; (2) New work on the biological underpinnings of stunting offer considerable potential but this will only be realized if economists engage deeply with nutritional sciences; and (3) The knowledge base surrounding the consequences of under-nutrition is more fragile than commonly realized; here too there is considerable scope for new work.
Biography:
John Hoddinott is the H.E. Babcock Professor of Food and Nutrition Economics and Policy, Cornell University. Before joining Cornell in 2015, he was Deputy Division Director at the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC. His research focusses on the causes and consequences of poverty, hunger and under-nutrition in developing countries. He has been heavily involved in primary data collection through living in a mud hut in western Kenya and a small town near Timbuktu Mali in addition to his work in Bangladesh, Cote d’Ivoire, Namibia, Niger, and Zimbabwe.