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Intake Monitoring, Assessment and Planning Program (IMAPP) Overview (302602)

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Keywords: Nutrition, software, dietary intake, food policy

Monitoring nutrient consumption on a macro level, such as country, is of great interest to nutritionists and food policy makers. Survey instruments such as 24 hour food recalls are commonly administered to nationwide samples to gather daily intake data. Daily dietary intake, however, is not of much import if we wish to, for example, understand the association between diet and health. What is of interest is the long-run average, or “usual” nutrient intake. In their 1996 JASA paper, Nusser et. al. propose a method, known as the ISU method, to estimate usual intake distributions – the distributions of greatest interests to food policy formulators – using short-term measurements on a sample of individuals. To make this methodology more accessible to nutritionists and other practitioners, the World Health Organization funded the development of software entitled Intake Monitoring, Assessment and Planning Program, or IMAPP. IMAPP is a menu-driven, user-friendly program that allows users to estimate not only the current prevalence of inadequate or excessive nutrient intake, but also to model the effect of fortification strategies on the nutritional status of the population. To do so, users must input daily nutrient and potential food vehicle intakes. An overview of the interface with IMAPP, as well as some details about the ISU methodology will be presented.