Region-wide assessment of the capacity for human nutrition training in West Africa: current situation, challenges, and way forward
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: There is a dearth of information on existing nutrition training programs in West Africa. A preliminary step in the process of developing a comprehensive framework to strengthen human capacity for nutrition is to conduct an inventory of existing training programs. OBJECTIVE: This study was conducted to provide baseline data on university-level nutrition training programs that exist in the 16 countries in West Africa. It also aimed to identify existing gaps in nutrition training and propose solutions to address them. DESIGN: Participating institutions were identified based on information provided by in-country key informants, UNICEF offices or through internet searches. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews during on-site visits or through self-administered questionnaires. Simple descriptive and bivariate analyses were performed. RESULTS: In total, 83 nutrition degree programs comprising 32 B.Sc. programs, 34 M.Sc. programs, and 17 Ph.D. programs were identified in the region. More than half of these programs were in Nigeria. Six countries (Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, The Gambia, and Togo) offered no nutrition degree program. The programs in francophone countries were generally established more recently than those in anglophone countries (age: 3.5 years vs. 21.4 years). Programs were predominantly (78%) run by government-supported institutions. They did not provide a comprehensive coverage of all essential aspects of human nutrition. They were heavily oriented to food science (46%), with little emphasis on public health nutrition (24%) or overnutrition (2%). Annual student intakes per program in 2013 ranged from 3 to 262; 7 to 40; and 3 to 10, respectively, for bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs while the number of graduates produced annually per country ranged from 6 to 271; 3 to 64; and 1 to 18, respectively. External collaboration only existed in 15% of the programs. In-service training programs on nutrition existed in less than half of the countries. The most important needs for improving the quality of existing training programs reported were teaching materials, equipment and infrastructures, funding, libraries and access to advanced technology resources. CONCLUSIONS: There are critical gaps in nutrition training in the West Africa region. The results of the present study underscore the urgent need to invest in nutrition training in West Africa. An expanded set of knowledge, skills, and competencies must be integrated into existing nutrition training curricula. Our study provides a basis for the development of a regional strategy to strengthen human capacity for nutrition across the region.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".