Data Foundation launches community-first learning agenda on nutrition and hunger

The Data Foundation, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has released a new learning agenda aimed at improving evidence-building around nutrition, hunger and health. The roadmap comes as food insecurity has barely changed over 30 years and is meant to help researchers, agencies and communities coordinate more effective action.

Why it matters: - The new agenda is designed to help the nutrition and hunger field move from documenting problems to scaling solutions. - Food insecurity has remained stubbornly high even after decades of research, federal initiatives and private investment. - The Data Foundation says better coordination, standards, capacity and infrastructure are needed to make evidence useful for decision-makers across sectors.

What happened: - The Data Foundation released the Learning Agenda on Nutrition, Hunger & Health on Sept. 3 in Washington, D.C. - The agenda was developed with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. - The release is paired with a webinar on Sept. 3 at 1 p.m. ET. - The webinar features Nick Hart, Sara Stefanik, Susan Jenkins, Spiro Stefanou, Nathan Varnell and Shelly Ver Ploeg.

The details: - The agenda was built from six focus groups and a cross-sector workshop. - Those sessions included 16 experts and then 33 participants. - Participants included frontline researchers, community organizations, academics and federal partners. - The agenda uses a topical approach instead of a single agency strategic plan. - The research questions are organized into four areas: data and evidence infrastructure, nutrition assistance programs, social determinants of health, and food and nutrition in medicine. - The agenda also includes guidelines for data collection, management, privacy and open science. - The learning agenda is meant to be complementary, with questions and practice guidelines working together to build the evidence base. - The Data Foundation said the most authoritative federal measure of food security, the Current Population Survey's Food Security Supplement, showed food insecurity at 11.9% of households in 1995 and 13.7% in 2024. - The 2024 figure was the 30th and final year of the food security supplemental survey. - A download link for the learning agenda is included in the release: Download the learning agenda.

Between the lines: - The agenda is also a test case for cross-sector, bottom-up evidence-building in a field often shaped by separate agency silos. - Hart said the project is meant to model community-led agendas and participatory process. - Stefanik said public and private investment has not moved the needle enough on food insecurity and diet-related health. - The timing suggests the Data Foundation wants to position the agenda as a practical follow-on to the Evidence Act’s broader promise of cross-topic learning. - The focus on infrastructure and ethical data practices signals that the field sees measurement and implementation gaps as part of the problem, not just a shortage of research findings.

What's next: - The webinar will walk through why the agenda matters now and how it connects research across government, academia and community groups. - The Data Foundation says agencies, funders and researchers can use the agenda to help close evidence and data infrastructure gaps. - The Center for Evidence Capacity will continue work on federal learning agenda implementation, evidence-building strategies, open data and evidence literacy.

The bottom line: - The Data Foundation wants to shift hunger and nutrition work from isolated research toward a shared, community-led evidence agenda that can support faster action.