Nutrition Policy Implementation: Issues and Experience

The MIT International Nutrition Planning Program (INP) was initiated in the fall of 1972 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, later supplemented by funds from USAID under the 2110 Program. Con­ ceived as a multidisciplinary undertaking, the INP was a joint effort of the Department of Nutrition and Food Science and the Center for Inter­ national Studies at MIT that also included representatives of the Depart­ ments of Economics, Political Science, Urban Studies, Humanities (Anthropology), and Civil Engineering. It has been successful in attract­ ing graduate students and conducting research on various international food and nutrition problems, including the design of intervention pro­ grams. A condition of the original grant from the Rockefeller Foundation was the organization of a meeting to summarize and evaluate the prog­ ress of the program. It was ultimately decided that the best approach would be a workshop that would attempt to assess what had been learned about the implementation of food and nutrition policies since the start of the INP. Out of concern for food and nutrition policy issues, the World Hunger Programme of The United Nations University (UNU) and the Ford Foundation also agreed to cosponsor the workshop.