FNCE 2025

FNCE 2025 GMIG Events

Global Member Interest Group Networking Reception Sunday 10/12/25 5:30 -7:00 PM 

DPG/MIG EVENTS

Register and receive your "passport" for a fun way to connect with colleagues in Global Member Interest Group and see their work in international humanitarian nutrition.  Give-a-way raffle, networking, and games will make mixing a world of fun! All FNCE attendees welcome!

Registration cost is free for all GMIG Members and $10 for Non-GMIG Members.

BRING A BUDDY, NON- MEMBER REGISTRATION FEE WILL BE APPLIED TO GMIG MEMBERSHIP

GMIG EC Meeting: Monday10/13/25  6:45-7:45 AM

 

GMIG Spotlight Session (424) “Immigrants, Refugees and Migrant Workers in the United States: How Nutrition and Dietetic Professionals Are Building Better Food Banks to End Hunger and Food Insecurity”, Sunday October 12, 2025 9:30-11:00 AM

Libby Mills, MS, RDN, LDN, FAND (Chair Global Member Interest Group, Program Planner;Moderator)

Cara Ruggiero, PhD, RD, LDN  Research Associate, University of Cambridge MRC Epidemiology Unit.    (Speaker)

Natalie Poulos, PhD, RD  Assistant Professor, Tenure-Track, College of Natural Sciences, Department of Nutritional Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin (Speaker)

Lauri Wright, PhD, RDN, LD/N, FADA Director of Nutrition Programs/Associate Professor, University of South Florida (Speaker)

Session Description:

Ending hunger by creating a food system that provides nourishing food to all human beings, is core to being a a nutrition and dietetic professional. Yet, those working jobs most US citizens don't want to do—immigrants, refugees and migrant workers, often experience hunger and food insecurity. Understanding cultural and migration experiences of immigrants, refugees and migrant workers, US political policy and trends driven by crisis and climate change give context to barriers such as awareness, access, language, discrimination and fear of deportation, to food bank assistance and short-comings of culturally insensitive offerings. Traditional, donation-reliant food bank assistance services have been criticized for lacking long-term self-reliance. However, four food bank – health care partnership models bringing to light innovative case studies from San Antonio Texas and the US that demonstrate sustainability, inclusion and resilience. An examination of a RDN-lead partnership with Feeding Tampa Bay gives a practice perspective for developing food bank - health care partnerships and adapting more culturally-sensitive food bank offerings. These conversations will provide resources of organizations who connect these ethnic populations with services, resources for money and how nutrition and dietetic professionals can act at a community, policy and governmental level.

The  AWIN (Alice Wimpfheimer Fund for International Exchange, Nutrition, Dietetics and Management) International Lecture submitted by  IAAND and GMIG  “Putting Global Child School Nutrition on the Map, Literally” Monday, October 13, 2025, from 10:00–11:30 AM.  

Jydy Beto PhD RDN FAND, International Affiliate of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (Program Planner)

Nadin Samaan RDN, LDN, Research Training and Development Director, Insight Advisory Group, Moderator

Arlene Mitchell, MS Executive Director, Global Child Nutrition Foundation (Speaker)

Heidi Kessler, MS, SNS School Nutrition Specialist, Global Child Nutrition Foundation (Speaker)

Donna S. Martin EdS, RDN, LD, SNS, FAND, School Nutrition Consultant, School Nutrition Solutions (Speaker)

Session Description

The Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF.org) implements the worlds only international survey of school meal programs.  Funded by Gene White MS SNS decades ago, GCN creates global school lunch partnerships between schools, governments, and farmers to create sustainable school feeding programs.  The goal of this program is to provide RNs and NDTRs insight into the extensive database and global impact of school lunch sustainable programs created by the GCNF.  One can view data from 165 countries and more that 200 separate school programs on their website.  Speakers will highlight the December 2024 biannual forum held in Osaka Japan and share data from the most recent 2025 global survey.  This session will cover key sessions: 1) what it takes to design and implement a complex global survey (including insight into what works and what does not), 2) what we are learning from the survey which is of particular interest to RDN and NDTRs in the US in setting up and implementing their own programs with cultural integrity, 3) logistic survey and program challenges encountered (ethical, communication, quality control), and 4) the research and scholarship opportunities that such a trove of data presents.