The Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI)’s Food and Nutrition Program is filled with passionate, multidisciplinary experts looking to empower advocates around the world to pass and implement healthy food policies. We sat down with one, Hema Khanchandani, Director for the Cardiovascular Health Program, who has a combined 15 years of experience in research, research translation and dissemination, policy advocacy and implementation, culinary instruction and menu development for institutions. Below is an excerpt from our interview with her.
1. How has GHAI’s Food and Nutrition Program progressed since you started?
Hema
I think the progression I’ve seen really comes from the team spirit and the visibility that we have across the programs. To be more specific, we have been hiring and promoting more regionally-based technical team members who are supporting multiple advocacy policy campaigns across countries and projects and now we're collaborating more intentionally. This gives us the opportunity to look comprehensively at the Food and Nutrition Program rather than the individual policy areas any individual team member is working on.
When I started in 2020, I was focused on only the 11 countries that were part of the CVH program, and now I’m in a position to track all of our progress across all the 30 countries we work in across the Food and Nutrition Program, including countries outside of my specific program area. We’ve had a significant number of policy wins and have also grown in our technical capacity as a team, bringing on some incredibly talented and knowledgeable team members.
2. What regional trends have you observed in advancing healthy food policies?
My team predominantly works in Africa and Asia, and we've been fortunate to have sustained a lot of our local grantees and partners, helping us evolve even more. We see a great deal of industry trends now that we're looking at the regional work across the portfolio and we're recognizing various patterns.
Because we've built our teams extensively in Africa and Asia, we've helped strengthen the capacity of many local advocates to campaign for healthy food policies and create significant momentum in several countries. It especially helps when we're able to connect our regional colleagues to advocates from across GHAI’s other programs as well.
3. In your role, what big picture goals do you have for the Food and Nutrition Program?
The Food and Nutrition Program's strength comes from our collaborating with our global team even beyond our existing policy work. There’s room to think about policies that improve access to healthier foods in an equitable manner. With our diverse team we have an opportunity to also build our advocacy networks. And I do believe that we're well on our way to doing that with the various technical symposiums that our teams are organizing.
Our team is looking closely at how to expand this portfolio holistically. We learn every day from our team members who are living and breathing these issues in the countries where we work. I want to create more opportunities to communicate what growth looks like and how the team worldwide can contribute to that growth in a meaningful way. It’s an exciting time for us and we have a wonderful team to help us head in that direction!
