Introduction and basic concepts in Nutrition in Emergencies

• Understanding malnutrition
• Causes of malnutrition
• Acute malnutrition, marasmus & kwashiorkor
• Stunting, underweight & micronutrient deficiencies

Measuring malnutrition in Emergencies

• Measuring malnutrition at individual level
• Measuring malnutrition at population level
• Most vulnerable to malnutrition
• Anthropometry

Classifying malnutrition

• The WHO Child Growth Standards
• Classifying malnutrition among children under 5
• Classifying malnutrition among other populations
• Using Nutritional Software

Response Overview

• Nutrition interventions framework
• Nutrition, project cycle & the HPC
• Standards and principles for nutrition response
• Coordination, humanitarian architecture and technical worldwide networks

Emergency response in nutrition

• Prevention and management of acute malnutrition
• Micronutrient interventions
• Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies (IYCF-E)
• Nutrition’ applied behaviour change

Nutrition & other sectors response

• Nutrition & the SDGs
• WASH
• Health
• Food security

Course graduates will be able to perform the following roles within nutrition programmes in emergencies:

• Programme coordinator
• Programme officer
• Technical advisor

The humanitarian worker that follows this course:

• Assess and analyze key nutrition-related questions and formulate appropriate technical options to answer them.
• Demonstrates understanding of coordination mechanisms in nutrition.
• Promotes and ensures compliance with the humanitarian principles and standards in nutrition.
• It establishes meaningful processes through which people affected by crises can participate in the response and share concerns.
• Demonstrates strong technical knowledge of malnutrition, the design of nutrition interventions and its relationship with other sectors in emergency and humanitarian contexts.
• Demonstrates an understanding of the continuum and contiguous of the nutrition emergency response and longer-term development needs.

The Teaching staff are:

• A Director of Studies, to deal with learning and administrative issues
• A humanitarian worker in charge of debates within the thematic forums as Guest Experts
• A Technician to give support with the virtual classroom

After completing successfully all the tests, the participant will be awarded the title of Nutrition Specialist in Emergencies and Humanitarian Settings.

Our courses use an e-learning methodology based on socio-constructivist pedagogy. Proponents of Constructivist Learning believe that knowledge is developed or ‘constructed’ in the mind of the student through collaborative learning processes rather than being merely passed on through traditional text books and teacher-to-student teaching methods.

Selected elements of our methodology are explained below:

• Learning takes place in a Virtual Classroom, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, accessible by internet from anywhere.
• Once in the classroom the student will find general information about the course as well as the course subject material with accompanying exercises and support documents.
• The training process for each of the topics draws on the following tools and materials.
  • Learning objectives
  • Presentations and videos
  • Selection of official documents from the United Nations, NGOs and official cooperation organizations, with study instructions.
  • Summary of key messages.
  • Bibliography
• The evaluation system consists of online exams
• The learning process is supported by the set up of debate forums for all topics.

All the students cover the same topics within the same timeframe, but each student works through the course materials at his or her own pace. This enables forums to be interesting and relevant, and often provokes discussion between students of a similar advanced level. The intrinsic flexibility in these courses means that, if necessary, students can interrupt their studies for periods of time, for work or other reasons. When this happens, they are recommended to restart at the same stage as the rest of the group and to gradually cover missed material with the support of the tutor.