Healthy Diets Monitoring Initiative (HDMI)

Diets profoundly impact our health, well-being, and longevity, while also influencing our planet's sustainability. Providing healthy diets for all and safeguarding our planet is at the very core of the food systems transformative agenda. As food systems and diets evolve globally, the importance of monitoring what people eat has never been more critical. Yet, there is a lack of consensus on the metrics that best capture the essence of healthy diets.

The Healthy Diets Monitoring Initiative (HDMI), a partnership among FAO, UNICEF, and WHO, is committed to addressing this challenge. Our mission is to "enable national and global decision-makers and stakeholders to monitor and achieve healthy diets for people and the planet”. For more information, recent documents and to get involved, visit the home of the Healthy Diets Monitoring Initiative.

The overall objective of the Healthy Diets Monitoring Initiative is to enable country and global monitoring of the healthfulness of diets to inform policies and programs across a wide range of sectors. Specifically, the Initiative will: 

• determine the components of a healthy diet and how best to measure healthy diets for different purposes
• build consensus with national and global stakeholders on healthy diet metrics that are suitable for specific purposes
• promote uptake and use of measures and indicators of healthy diets among national and global stakeholders.

Achieving these objectives will require identifying the essence of healthy diets that, aligned with WHO recommendations, needs to be captured; appraising the current state of data collection systems, methods, measures, and indicators for assessment and monitoring of healthy diets; and developing operational guidance on data quality, methods for data collection, and indicators suitable for national and global assessment and monitoring of population dietary patterns towards healthy diets.

• Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
• United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
• Rockefeller Foundation
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Tufts University
• University of South Carolina

Kuntal Saha
Email: sahak@who.int

Elaine Borghi
Email: borghie@who.int