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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Ruth Meinzen-Dick

Ruth Meinzen-Dick is a Senior Research Fellow in the Natural Resources and Resilience Unit. She has extensive transdisciplinary research experience in using qualitative and quantitative research methods. Her work focuses on two broad (and sometimes interrelated) areas: how institutions affect how people manage natural resources, and the role of gender in development processes. 

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Nutrition, Diets, and Health

Soyra Gune

Research Analyst

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Bio

Soyra Gune is a Research Analyst in the Nutrition Diets, and Health Unit, based in New Delhi. She supports IFPRI’s research on nutrition, diets, and health in India and more recently, in Bangladesh and Nepal. Her research in India involves secondary data analysis of large-scale datasets on health and nutrition. Another strand of her research involves the recommendation of statistical methods to researchers who work on health and nutrition topics in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In addition, she has engaged and collaborated with stakeholders such as Campbell South Asia, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), UNICEF, the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), and All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on projects related to maternal and child nutrition, and she has presented IFPRI’s work at national nutrition forums.

Soyra also supports the work of CGIAR’s Sustainable Healthy Diets through Food Systems Transformation (SHiFT) Research Initiative in Viet Nam, where she is working on the evaluation of a school meal program innovation in secondary schools. In addition, she is interested in evaluating the effectiveness of system-strengthening approaches to improve the delivery of health and nutrition interventions in LMICs, as well as in understanding the impact of intrahousehold dynamics on women’s access to healthcare.

Before joining IFPRI, she completed her MSc (with distinction) in economics from the University of Warwick, where she was jointly awarded the Shiv Nath prize for best performance in development economics, and her BA (with honors) in economics with a minor in development and sustainability from Azim Premji University, India.

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Publications

Resource thumbnail

Data Paper

Status of nutrition in Nepal: Trends in outcomes, determinants and coverage of interventions between 2016 and 2022

2024
Kapoor, Rati; Gupta, Monali; Gune, Soyra; Christopher, Anita; Nguyen, Phuong; Neupane, Sumanta; Thapa, Lila Bikram; Ghale, Yamuna; Ratanapruck, Prista; Rana, Pooja Pandey
…more Cunningham, Cunningham; Saville, Naomi; Avula, Rasmi
Details

Status of nutrition in Nepal: Trends in outcomes, determinants and coverage of interventions between 2016 and 2022

This Country Profile describes the trends in key nutrition outcomes, their determinants, and coverage of nutrition and health interventions during critical life stages for women and children in Nepal at the national and province level. The findings are based on the 2016 and 2022 data from Nepal’s Demographic and Health Surveys. Bar graphs were used to visualize national trends, maps and color-coded dashboards illustrate province-level trends. The purpose of the profile is to be an easily interpretable reference for nutrition stakeholders in Nepal.

Year published

2024

Authors

Kapoor, Rati; Gupta, Monali; Gune, Soyra; Christopher, Anita; Nguyen, Phuong; Neupane, Sumanta; Thapa, Lila Bikram; Ghale, Yamuna; Ratanapruck, Prista; Rana, Pooja Pandey; Cunningham, Cunningham; Saville, Naomi; Avula, Rasmi

Citation

Kapoor, Rati; Gupta, Monali; Gune, Soyra; Christopher, Anita; Nguyen, Phuong; Thapa, Lila Bikram; et al. 2024. Status of nutrition in Nepal: Trends in outcomes, determinants and coverage of interventions between 2016 and 2022. SANI Data Note 1. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155057

Country/Region

Nepal

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Children; Data; Nutrition; Surveys; Women

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Data Paper

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Journal Article

Toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission and infant mortality in India

2024Chakrabarti, Suman; Gune, Soyra; Bruckner, Tim A.; Strominger, Julie; Singh, Parvati
Details

Toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission and infant mortality in India

Improvement of water and sanitation conditions may reduce infant mortality, particularly in countries like India where open defecation is highly prevalent. We conducted a quasi-experimental study to investigate the association between the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)—a national sanitation program initiated in 2014—and infant (IMR) and under five mortality rates (U5MR) in India. We analyzed data from thirty-five Indian states and 640 districts spanning 10 years (2011–2020), with IMR and U5MR per thousand live births as the outcomes. Our main exposure was the district-level annual percentage of households that received a constructed toilet under SBM. We mapped changes in IMR and U5MR and toilet access at the district level over time. We fit two-way fixed effects regression models controlling for sociodemographic, wealth, and healthcare-related confounders at the district-level to estimate the association between toilets constructed and child mortality. Toilet access and child mortality have a historically robust inverse association in India. Toilets constructed increased dramatically across India following the implementation of SBM in 2014. Results from panel data regression models show that districts with > 30% toilets constructed under SBM corresponds with 5.3 lower IMR (p < 0.05), and 6.8 lower U5MR (p < 0.05). Placebo, falsification tests and robustness checks support our main findings. The post-SBM period in India exhibited accelerated reductions in infant and child mortality compared to the pre-SBM years. Based on our regression estimates, the provision of toilets at-scale may have contributed to averting approximately 60,000–70,000 infant deaths annually. Our findings show that the implementation of transformative sanitation programs can deliver population health benefits in low- and middle-income countries.

Year published

2024

Authors

Chakrabarti, Suman; Gune, Soyra; Bruckner, Tim A.; Strominger, Julie; Singh, Parvati

Citation

Chakrabarti, Suman; Gune, Soyra; Bruckner, Tim A.; Strominger, Julie; and Singh, Parvati. 2024. Toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission and infant mortality in India. Scientific Reports 14(2024): 20340. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-71268-8

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Hygiene; Infants; Mortality; Water

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-71268-8 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Resource thumbnail

Abstract

Strengthening delivery platforms of national nutrition programs in subnational geographies in India improved coverage of interventions and child growth

2024Gune, Soyra; Alderman, Harold; Avula, Rasmi; Nguyen, Phuong; Chakrabarti, Suman
Details

Strengthening delivery platforms of national nutrition programs in subnational geographies in India improved coverage of interventions and child growth

Objectives: Between 2016 and 2020, novel system strengthening mechanisms were implemented in 63.9% (N=409) of India’s districts by the government in collaboration with multiple partners to enhance the delivery of essential nutrition interventions for women and children during the critical first 1,000 days. We evaluated the influence of these mechanisms on the coverage of interventions and child growth outcomes.

Year published

2024

Authors

Gune, Soyra; Alderman, Harold; Avula, Rasmi; Nguyen, Phuong; Chakrabarti, Suman

Citation

Gune, Soyra; Alderman, Harold; Avula, Rasmi; Nguyen, Phuong; and Chakrabarti, Suman. 2024. Strengthening delivery platforms of national nutrition programs in subnational geographies in India improved coverage of interventions and child growth. Current Developments in Nutrition 8 (Supplement 2): 102949. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cdnut.2024.102949

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Nutrition; Child Development; State Intervention; Maternal and Child Health

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cdnut.2024.102949 Source record

Record type

Abstract

Blogs

Comprehensive sanitation in India: Despite progress, an unfinished agenda
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 23, 2024

Comprehensive sanitation in India: Despite progress, an unfinished agenda

By Suman Chakrabarti, Soyra Gune, Tim A. Bruckner, Julie Strominger, and Parvati Singh

Building on improvements in Infant mortality.

News

September 05, 2024 | In the News

Swachh Bharat Mission averted 60,000-70,000 infant deaths between 2011 & 2020, shows Nature study (The Print)

IFPRI Researchers analyzed infant & under-5 mortality data from 35 states, 640 districts. Research praised by PM Modi on X.