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Dr. Kathleen Ragsdale and SSRC Intern Laura Ingouf will travel to Zambia for two weeks in mid-July to conduct Fish4Zambia: Assessing Facilitators and Barriers to Aquaculture and Fish Consumption in Zambia (K. Ragsdale, PI, Lauren Pincus, PI). The research is funded by the Feed the Future Fish Innovation Lab (M. Lawrence, PI) through support from USAID. Fish4Zambia is a 12-month project that aims to increase the quality and quantity of fish benefitting poor households in Zambia, with a particular focus on enhancing nutrition and food security among pregnant and lactating women and infants and children under the age of 2 years.
Dr. Kathleen Ragsdale (U.S. PI), Dr. Mary Read-Wahidi (U.S. Co-PI), Steven Cole of WorldFish/Zambia (Host Country PI), and Pamela Marinda of University of Zambia (Host Country Co-PI) have received funding to conduct “Assessing Facilitators and Barriers to Aquaculture and Fish Consumption in Zambia (Fish4Zambia),” which was awarded by the Feed the Future Fish Innovation Lab (M. Lawrence, PI) through support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Fish4Zambia is a 12-month project that aims to increase the quality and quantity of fish benefitting nutrition and food security in Zambia, especially for women and children who are in the first critical 1,000 days of life.
Dr. Kathleen Ragsdale was an Invited Attendee at the USAID – WorldFish Knowledge Sharing Session held at USAID Headquarters in Washington, DC, on May 30, 2019. The Knowledge Sharing Session was entitled, Fish in the Future Global Research and Development Agendas: Feeding Billions, Nourishing Nations. Keynote speakers included Dr. Robert Bertram, Chief Scientist, USAID Bureau of Food Security; Dr. Shivaun Leonard, USAID Aquaculture Advisor; Dr. Mark Lawrence, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish, Director; Dr. Gareth Johnstone, WorldFish Director General; Dr. Michael Phillips, WorldFish Director of Research; and Dr. Shakuntala Thilsted, WorldFish Research Program Leader.
Dr. Gina Rico Mendez will give two oral presentations at the World Bank 20th Land and Poverty Conference, which will be held March 25-29 in Washington, DC. Dr. Kathleen Ragsdale and Dr. Mary Read-Wahidi are co-authors on both presentations. The first presentation is based on results from the Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) SIL’s Socioeconomic and Gender Equity Research (SGER) team’s “Gender Equity and Land Tenure Focus Group Discussions: Phase II” conducted in 2018 among smallholder soybean farmers in Ghana’s Northern Region. SIL is managed by the University of Illinois through support from USAID (Award No. AID-OAA-L-14-00001; P. Goldsmith, PI) and provides support to SGER at Mississippi State University (Grant No. 2013-04026-07; K. Ragsdale, PI). The second presentation is based on preliminary results of the SGER team’s work on the USAID Bureau of Food Security-funded project, “Harnessing the Potential for Rural Youth-Inclusive Agri-Food Systems Livelihoods: A Landscape Analysis.”
Dr. Kathleen Ragsdale, Dr. Mary Read-Wahidi, Dr. Gina Rico Mendez, and Mawuli Asigbee MSc – the Agriculture Program Manager of with Catholic Relief Services/Ghana –will give a webinar on May 2 hosted by the Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) 2.0. The webinar is titled, “Why Gender and Land Matter in Rural Ghana and the World: The Importance of Closing the Gender Gap in Agricultural Development.”
Dr. Kathleen Ragsdale and Dr. Mary Read-Wahidi traveled to the Mississippi Delta with SSRC GRA Kelly Lower and Anthropology Masters candidate Malavika Jinka to meet with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Teen Health Mississippi during April 17-18, 2018 for the Focus4Teens initiative.
Dr. Kathleen Ragsdale and Dr. Mary Read-Wahidi have just completed implementation of Wave II of the Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab Gender Responsive Agricultural Development Assessment (GRADA-SIL II). This is an internal instrument developed by Ragsdale and Read-Wahidi – who lead theSoybean Innovation Lab (P. Goldsmith, PI) Gender Impacts team – to evaluate how the Lab’s research scientists, technicians, and other implementing partners in the U.S. and Sub-Saharan Africa measure the gender-responsive agricultural impacts of SIL-related activities and trainings. The GRADA-SIL II results will be used to identify gaps and determine entry points to improve efforts to effectively implement gender responsive agricultural development into the Lab’s activities and trainings.
SSRC Intern, Laura Ingouf, received first place in the Social Sciences category at the MSU Undergraduate Research Symposium held on April 16, 2019. Ingouf’s poster was based on results from three annual large-scale surveys that the SSRC Gender Impacts Lab has implemented in rural Ghana as part of the USAID-funded Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab. Ingouf presented on results from the Household Hunger Scale across three separate ‘hunger periods’ for farming families and across four regional districts in Ghana’s Northern Region.
SSRC Intern, Laura Ingouf, was awarded a Summer Research Stipend I and a Summer Research Stipend II that total $4,000. Laura will use these funds to 1) spend two weeks in Zambia to assist with data collection for the project, Fish4Zambia: Assessing Facilitators and Barriers to Aquaculture and Fish Consumption in Zambia, and 2) assist with data analyses after returning to MSU.
Dr. Kathleen Ragsdale served as an abstract reviewer for three programs for the 147th American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting, which will be held in Philadelphia on November 2-6, 2019. The three APHA programs include: International Health Program, Maternal and Child Health Program, and Public Health Education and Health Promotion Program.
Dr. Mary Read-Wahidi served as an abstract reviewer for a program for the 147th American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting, which will be held in Philadelphia on November 2-6, 2019. The APHA program was the International Health Program.
Dr. Kathleen Ragsdale and Dr. Mary Read-Wahidi were invited for an on-camera interview with David Garraway, Director of Mississippi State’s University Television Center, about their work on Fish4Zambia: Assessing Facilitators and Barriers to Aquaculture and Fish Consumption in Zambia (K. Ragsdale, PI, Lauren Pincus, PI).
Mississippi State University
Social Science Research Center
1 Research Blvd #102A
Starkville, MS 39759
Email: genderimpactslab@ssrc.msstate.edu