Nutrition Connect works for enhancing public and private sector actors’ engagement on priority areas for ensuring healthier diets. One such priority area is Workforce Nutrition. It just makes better business sense when we have heathier workforce !
Our campaign "Good Health. Good Work: Prioritizing Workforce Nutrition" focuses on this very need, to bring better balance to the 'three Ps' : People, Planet and Prosperity. This campaign as it shaped up, met with tremendous views, dug deeper into the challenges and solutions and deep dived into some of the well-laid plans of corporates, development sector experts and private sector visionaries alike. All trying to arrive at the best solutions to the challenge - ''How can we make our workforce more robust with better nutrition?”
As we championed the campaign across Africa and Asia and what all that it stood for, it resonated deep with many global observances that celebrated the worker, the regular employee, in all of us. It resonated with the World Health Day that focused on the theme this year of - 'My health, my right,' emphasizing the fundamental right of individuals to access comprehensive health services, including quality nutrition, safe water, and clean air, underlining the necessity for good health as a foundation for leading a productive and fulfilled lives). It resonated with the World Day for Safety and Health at Work that highlighted occupational safety, stressing the impact of climate change on working conditions. It resonated with Labour Day focusing on the achievements and contributions of workers and spreading awareness on the rights and opportunities for labour for their welfare and betterment.
It's a clarion call. The importance of good health, welfare, well-being of workers and employees in corporations and other private and public sector entities, with better diets, good working conditions and environments contributes directly to improved bottom lines and improved accountabilities all around. We need to do better; we need to do it faster and we need to do it together.
Perhaps, a little context setting is in order.
Despite the recognition of health as a human right in many countries', lacking public and private sector policy and action for ensuring access to better health and working conditions for workers is concerning. Workers' health is increasingly at risk worldwide, due to many direct and indirect negative externalities arising from crises, conflicts, and climate change. At least 4.5 billion people — more than half of the world’s population — were not fully covered by essential health services in 2021. This highlights the urgent need for action to safeguard workers' health and well-being. Poor diets are costing countries up to 20 % in lost productivity, essentially due to the double burden of malnutrition i.e. undernutrition, overweight and obesity and consequential noncommunicable diseases, cardiovascular disease, and even cancers. Poor meal programs, lacking health awareness, poor facilities at the workplace for holistic care especially for women workers workplace, underlie many workplace issues, be it, employee morale, worker safety or the long-term health and productivity of workers.
Better nutrition and healthcare facilities at the workplace, can raise productivity rates for corporations, reduce worker sick days, and in turn benefit corporate and country economies. Workplace meal programs, for instance, can prevent micronutrient deficiencies and chronic diseases arising from NCDs, with modest investments by the private and public sector enterprises. With people spending an average one-third of their adult lives at work, companies investing in and supporting the nutrition of working communities can unlock a range of health, societal, and economic benefits. Additionally, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 8) on Decent Work and Economic Growth highlights that workplaces should be healthy and safe environments in which labor rights are prioritized.
With the "Good Health. Good Work." campaign Nutrition Connect emphasizes the criticality of nutrition in maintaining workforce health and safety and aligns with other collaborative efforts underway to promote holistic health rights and climate-aware occupational safety.
The campaign serves as a call to action for public and private sectors actors alike, to prioritize and invest in workforce nutrition as a cornerstone of global health and safety initiatives.
This campaign of Nutrition Connect thus focuses on a 4-pillar framework that also resonates with the workforce nutrition programme for GAIN and partners working to improve :
- Access to healthy food
- Breastfeeding support
- Nutrition-related health checks with follow up dietary counseling, and
- Nutrition education
