ENVIRONMENTAL AND NUTRITION OUTCOMES - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 164

wide-ranging evidence on food insecure people to provide core answers to the following
questions:

• Howsevereisthesituation?
• Whereareareasthatarefoodinsecure?
• Howmanyfoodinsecurepeopleliveintheseregions?
• Whoarethefoodinsecurepeopleintermsofsocio-economiccharacteristics?
• Whyarethepeoplefoodinsecure?

The IPC has four functions: to build technical consensus, to classify severity and causes, to
communicating severity for action, and to provide quality assurance. The IPC is the descen-
dent of the food security indicators developed by Frankenberger and Downing in the early
1990s, but allows for a much greater focus on outcome than the more process-oriented
metrics that were used previously. The IPC also brings an analytical framework that builds
from four widely used conceptual frameworks: the Risk = f (Hazard, Vulnerability) used by
the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) framework, Sustainable Livelihoods Approach, Nutri-
tion Conceptual Model and the four “dimensions” of food security (availability, access, utili-
zation and stability).
Understanding what the nutritional status and mortality indicators are and being able to
link them to environmental dynamics as well as food access is an important aspect of the
work. Table 8.3 provides a description of indirect measures of nutritional status and where an

TABLE 8.3 Indicators of nutritional status from the IPC Handbook

Parameter Indirect indicator Source

Nutritional
status

Underweight Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS),

Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), Nutrition
studies (e.g., Centre for Research on the
Epidemiology of Disasters, Complex Emergency
Database (CRED CEDAT database)

Admissions to feeding programs Health Information System Data Sentinel site data

Prevalence of night blindness
(children under 5/pregnant
mothers)

Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) (pregnant
mothers)

Prevalence of low birth weight Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey

Household iodized salt
consumption

Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey

Iron and folic acid
supplementation programs to
pregnant women

Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey and the
Demographic and Health Survey (DHS)

Vitamin A supplementation
programs to children under 5
and/or breastfeeding mothers

Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey