Health and Nutrition Officer

UNICEF promotes the rights and wellbeing of every child, in everything we do. Together with our partners, we work to translate that commitment into practical action, especially for the most disadvantaged children.

In the Pacific we work in Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu: These 14 Pacific island countries are home to 2.3 million people, including 1.2 million children and youth, living on more than 660 islands and atolls stretching across 17.2 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean, an area comparable to the combined size of the United States of America and Canada.

Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu are classified as Fragile States according to World Bank/OECD criteria. All 14 Pacific island countries have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but only a third are on track with reporting obligations.

The UNV volunteer will support UNICEF Pacific’s health and nutrition programme. This includes supporting governments to strengthen health systems to accelerate progress towards universal access to quality and climate-resilient health and nutrition services that are appropriate, affordable and accessible to children, adolescents and women, especially those in remote settings. UNICEF also supports the governments in accelerating efforts to promote multi-system and multi-stakeholder approaches to address triple burden of malnutrition (undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity), improve the quality of foods, food environments and nutritional practice of children, adolescents and women and ensure household food security. UNICEF supports governments to strengthen the existing legislation and regulatory frameworks, or to develop new ones that support the availability and affordability of nutritious foods and regulate the importation and marketing of unhealthy foods. Given the growing prevalence of obesity in children, UNICEF invests in multisectoral approaches to promote healthy lifestyles and dietary practices, including social and behavioural change and youth-led advocacy initiatives, engagement with private sector food producers and strengthening school nutrition programmes.

Under the direct supervision of Nutrition Manager, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:

Support the management of “Fix My Food” campaign, a multi-year and multi-country campaign to empower youth to advocate for healthier food environments and to drive demand for effective government policies in Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). This will include: mobilization of youth champions; consolidation of available data / information from multiple studies, assessments and analyses to help youth identify advocacy priorities; organization of the co-creation workshops and capacity building interventions for youth; provision of necessary administrative, logistic and programmatic support for campaign implementation; and development and operationalization of monitoring and evaluation framework for the campaign

Support the planning and management of other youth engagement, social mobilization, communication and advocacy activities to promote child health and nutrition as well as healthy food environment

Support the coordination of multi-sectoral school-based interventions for students’ health, nutrition and well-being, in close collaboration with Education, WASH, and Child Protection teams as well as relevant line Ministries and other partners

Support knowledge management in health and nutrition programming, including secondary analysis of survey data

Contribute to establishing and maintaining partnerships with different stakeholders including donors and resource mobilisation for health and nutrition programming