World Food Prize winners tie improved child nutrition to economic health
This year’s World Food Prize will be awarded to two “nutrition champions,” who use research to show political and business leaders that improving pregnant mother and child nutrition is critical to economic health.
Lawrence Haddad and David Nabarro were named the 2018 World Food Prize Laureates during a ceremony at the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday.
Both Britons, Haddad, an economist, and Nabarro, a doctor, have elevated the discussions around attacking malnutrition in developing countries, said the World Food Prize, based in Des Moines.
The men’s work has reduced the number of stunted children globally by 10 million between 2012 and 2017, the World Food Prize said.
The prize was created by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Iowa native Norman Borlaug in 1986 to recognize scientists and others who have improved the quality and quantity of food.
Haddad and Nabarro say they were surprised to win the World Food Prize.
“I’m not somebody who has had a great invention or discovery or written a brilliant book,” said Nabarro, coordinator of the United Nation’s Scaling Up Nutrition Movement from 2010 to 2014.
Nabarro has, though, spent years bringing people with different views together for “results that are better than any could achieve on their own,” he said.
“I’ve spent a lot of time doing this at a high level but also in communities and I’m encouraging others to do it,” said the 68-year-old, who worked from 1999 to 2008 at the U.N.’s World Health Organization in several capacities, including leading global responses to hunger and disease crises.
“I’ve found if you let go of control and actually give people the space to work together in a way that they find works for them, then absolute magic comes out of it,” Nabarro said.
Haddad said one thing that unites him and Nabarro is that they’re both “champions for nutrition. And nutrition needs champions.”