Advanced Training in Food and Nutrition: Disciplinary, Interdisciplinary, and Problem-Oriented Approaches

The development of effective and sustainable solutions to food and nutrition problems is known to require knowledge from many disciplines and the involvement of multiple sectors within a country. For this reason, interdisciplinary knowledge and intersectoral action have come to be recognized as important strategies. Disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge is essential for characterizing the prevalence, distribution, causes, and consequences of food and nutrition problems, and for developing and testing potential interventions. However, this paper maintains that disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge is insufficient for generating effective and sustainable solutions. The paper identifies four limitations inherent in this approach (pragmatic, epistemological, instrumental, and normative) and argues that a problem-oriented, participatory approach is required to overcome these limitations at all administrative levels from community through national policy. This approach draws upon knowledge from diverse disciplines in the search for solutions, but also integrates it with situation-specific knowledge concerning causes, feasibility, and distributional consequences of alternative solutions, and social interests and values held by the interested and affected parties. Although these are amenable to analysis through well-established methods of planning and social sciences, these methods are still subject to the four limitations noted above. This perspective is used in the second half of this paper to identify the key characteristics of effective practitioners and the key elements of advanced training programmes.