The research behind Food Prices for Nutrition is led by principal investigator William Masters with project manager Alex Knueppel at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. The initial project (2020-24) was co-directed by Anna Herforth in partnership with the World Bank’s Development Data Group and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). This page lists the institutions and individuals with whom we work now and in recent projects serving national governments and international institutions. For 2005-29 a companion project works with private enterprises to improve food supplies through Data Analytics for Food Markets in Africa, and a related effort helps researchers improve food systems through the Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Science-Policy Platform.
Supporting national actions to improve affordability of healthy diets (2025-2029)
- William Masters, Principal Investigator
- Alex Knueppel, Project Manager
- Shaelin Cullen, Project Coordinator
- Policy researcher TBD
Food Prices for Nutrition (2020-2024)
- William Masters, Principal Investigator
- Anna Herforth, Co-Director
- Alex Knueppel, Project Manager
- Rachel Gilbert, Graduate researcher
- Leah Costlow, Graduate researcher
- Oluwagbenga Sadik, Program Officer
- Student consultants
- Collaborators funded by other projects
- Elena Martinez, Postdoctoral Fellow (IMMANA)
- Jessica Wallingford, PhD candidate (Canadian SSHRC Fellow)
- Marko Rissanen, Senior Statistician
- Yan Bai, Economist
- Edie Purdie, Data communications consultant
- Derek Headey, Senior Research Fellow
- Kristi Mahrt, Senior Research Analyst
- Kalyani Raghunathan, Research Fellow
- Timothy Sulser, Senior Research Fellow
- Monitoring the cost and affordability of a healthy diet within countries (global review article)
- Ongoing collaborators (initial focal countries)
Other Collaborations
- The FAO Statistics Division publishes global diet cost and affordability data jointly with the World Bank, and leads each year’s analysis in the UN agencies’ flagship annual report on global food security
- The WFP’s Fill the Nutrient Gap initiative uses diet cost and affordability data to target nutrition assistance
- The ANH Academy’s Research Community on Food Access offers all researchers a peer-to-peer network for sharing methods, data and results
Other Collaborators at Tufts, the World Bank and IFPRI
- Tufts University: faculty members Steven Block, Jennifer Coates, Elena Naumova, Shibani Ghosh, Patrick Webb; former students & staff Robel Alemu, Alissa Ebel, Sarah Laves, Hallie Perlick, Kate Schneider, Yurika Ueda, Aishwarya Venkat, Natalie Volin, Maya Zamek
- World Bank: Maurice Nsabimana, Inyoung Song, Rui Costa, Elizabeth Purdie
- IFPRI: Harold Alderman, Kalle Hirvonen, Will Martin
Funders
The Food Prices for Nutrition project (2020-2024, with a supplement for 2024-2025) was funded as INV-016158 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UK International Development. We received additional funding from FAO for the specific data & methods used in the SOFI 2020, 2021 and 2022 reports, and from USAID for work in Malawi and worldwide.
NEWS AND CONVERSATION
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