NIHR Global Health Research Group on Community Food, Nutrition and Planetary Health in Island States In small island countries of the Caribbean, South East Asia and the Pacific, around two thirds of the food consumed is imported. Most of the imported food is of low nutritional value. At the same time, local food production has been steadily declining, made worse by increasingly frequent extreme weather events associated with climate change. All of these countries have high burdens of nutrition related ill-health, including non-communicable diseases associated with overweight and obesity and deficiencies of some micronutrients, especially iron.

We are public health, agricultural and social scientists and civil society stakeholders who aim to improve the nutrition, health, social and economic well-being of populations in low- and middle- income small island countries by applying approaches that develop healthy, resilient and environmentally sustainable community-based food production. We come from the Universities of the West Indies, South Pacific, Western Philippines, Exeter (UK), Cambridge (UK), McGill (Canada), and the Danish Technical University. We include scientists from the James Hutton Institute (UK) and community engagement and development specialists from the Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprises and Development (FRIEND) in Fiji.

We will work in island countries and settings in the Caribbean, Pacific and Philippines to provide evidence on how to improve human and ecosystem health for better nutrition. The work will be guided by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s 10 elements of agroecology. We will work with local communities to assess their needs and develop ‘living labs’ to work together to increase local food production and improve household nutrition. The project will inform national and regional policy goals of developing sustainable and healthy food systems. The project is organised into four work packages (WP), which are summarised below. 1. To critically appraise and synthesize published evidence on diet, nutrition, their health impacts, and on community-based food production in small island countries, with a specific focus on the project islands in the Caribbean, Pacific and Philippines.
2.Guided by the findings from objective 1 and in consultation with local communities and stakeholders, to select geographically and ecologically defined settings within each project island, and as needed undertake new data collection on:
3.To create ‘communities of practice’ and ‘living labs’ for the design of interventions in the project settings. These will bring together community food producers, other stakeholders across the food value chain, consumers, policy makers and researchers in order to:
4.To undertake qualitative (non-mathematical) and quantitative (mathematical) modelling to assess, compared to business as usual, the potential human and ecosystem health impacts if the interventions designed as part of objective 3 are more widely adopted: 
The objectives related to the continuation of the programme are: 
5.To develop a web-based resource and repository of materials, case studies and guidance to support dissemination and further applied research to support the further development of sustainable community-based food production and human nutrition.
6.To build the breadth and depth of research capacity across and within the project settings to maintain and further develop this programme of work