Anibal Velásquez, MD, MSc, is the Senior Policy Advisor for Public Policy and Partnerships at the World Food Programme in Peru, a position he has held since 2018.
He is a medical epidemiologist with over 20 years of national and international experience in research, evaluation of social programs, and the design and implementation of health and food security policies. He contributed to the development and implementation of Peru’s child malnutrition reduction strategy and health sector reform and played a key role in the initial design of the country’s front-of-package warning label policy.
Dr. Velásquez has held leadership and consultancy roles in public institutions and international cooperation agencies across 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. He served as Peru’s Minister of Health (2014–2016), Director of Evaluation and Monitoring at the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion (MIDIS), and Director of the National Institute of Health.
Contact details:
E-mail: anibal.velasquez@gmail.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/anibalvelasquez
Peru
Anibal Velasquez
Senior Policy Advisor for Public Policy and Partnerships at the World Food Programme
WFP
Posted on 08/12/2025
Drawing on WFP’s experience in Peru, I would argue that “connecting evidence and action in real time” is not primarily a technical challenge of evaluation. It is, above all, about how the UN positions itself within political cycles, how it serves as a knowledge intermediary, and how it accompanies governments throughout decision-making processes. Based on what we observed in anemia reduction, rice fortification and shock-responsive social protection, at least seven concrete pathways can help the UN and its partners strengthen this evidence–decision link.
1. Design evaluations for decisions, not for publication
Impact evaluations must begin with very specific policy questions tied directly to upcoming decisions:
In Peru, community health worker pilots in Ventanilla, Sechura and Áncash were not designed as academic exercises, but as policy laboratories explicitly linked to decisions: municipal anemia targets, MINSA technical guidelines, the financing of Meta 4 and later Compromiso 1. Once the pilots demonstrated clear results, the government financed community health home visits nationwide for the first time. Subsequent evaluation of the national programme showed that three percentage points of annual reduction in childhood anemia could be attributed to this intervention.
For the UN, this means co-designing pilots and evaluations with ministries of finance, social sectors and subnational governments, agreeing from the outset on:
2. Embed adaptive learning cycles into the country’s operational cycle
In Peru, WFP integrated evidence generation and use into its operational cycle, creating explicit moments for reflection, contextual analysis and strategic adjustment. This logic can be scaled across the UN system:
The most effective approach is to institutionalize learning loops: periodic spaces where government and UN teams jointly review data, interpret findings, and adjust norms, protocols or budgets on short, iterative cycles.
3. Position the country office as a knowledge broker (a public-sector think tank)
In Peru, WFP increasingly operated as a Knowledge-Based Policy Influence Organization (KBPIO):
For the UN, strengthening the evaluation–decision link requires country offices to synthesize and translate evidence—from their own evaluations, global research and systematic reviews—into short, actionable, timely products, and to act as trusted intermediaries in the actual spaces where decisions are made: cabinet meetings, budget commissions, regional councils, boards of public enterprises and beyond.
4. Turn strategic communication into an extension of evaluation
In the Peruvian experience, evidence on anemia, rice fortification, food assistance for TB patients and shock-responsive social protection became policy only because it was strategically communicated:
For the UN, the lesson is unequivocal:
every major evaluation needs a communication and advocacy strategy—with defined audiences, tailored messages, designated spokespersons, windows of opportunity and specific channels. Evidence cannot remain in a 200-page report; it must become public narratives that legitimize policy change and sustain decisions over time.
5. Accompany governments across the entire policy cycle
In Peru, WFP did not merely deliver reports; it accompanied government partners throughout the full policy cycle:
This accompaniment blended roles—implementer, technical partner and facilitator—depending on the moment and the institutional need. For the UN, one of the most powerful ways to connect evaluation with decision-making is to embed technical teams in key ministries (health, social development, finance, planning) to work side by side with decision-makers, helping interpret results and convert them into concrete regulatory, budgetary and operational instruments.
6. Build and sustain alliances and champions who “move the needle”
In Peru, evidence became public policy because strategic champions existed: vice-ministers, governors, heads of social programmes, the MCLCP, and committed private-sector partners. The UN and its partners can strengthen the evidence–decision nexus by:
In this sense, evaluations—impact evaluations, formative assessments, cost-effectiveness studies—become assets that empower national actors in their own political environments, rather than external products belonging solely to the UN.
7. Invest in national data systems and evaluative capacities
Real-time decision-making is impossible when data arrive two years late. In Peru, part of WFP’s added value was supporting improvements in information systems, monitoring and analytical capacity at national and regional levels.
For the UN, this translates into:
8. Understand how decisions are made to ensure recommendations are actually used
Understanding real-world decision-making is essential for evaluations to have influence. Decisions are embedded in political incentives, institutional constraints and specific temporal windows. The Cynefin framework is useful for distinguishing whether a decision environment is:
An evaluation that ignores this landscape may be technically sound but politically unfeasible or operationally irrelevant. Evaluating is not only about producing evidence; it is about interpreting how decisions are made and tailoring recommendations to that reality.
In synthesis
From the Peru experience, the most effective way for the UN and its partners to connect evaluations with real-time decision-making is to stop treating evaluation as an isolated event and instead turn it into a continuous, political–technical process that:
In short: fewer reports that arrive too late, and more living evidence—co-produced, communicated and politically accompanied—at the service of governments and the people we aim to reach.
Anibal Velásquez, MD, MSc, is Senior Policy Advisor for Public Policy and Partnerships at the World Food Programme in Peru since 2018. A medical epidemiologist with over 20 years of experience, he has led research, social program evaluations, and the design of health and food security policies. He contributed to Peru’s child malnutrition strategy, health sector reform, and key innovations such as adaptive social protection for emergencies, fortified rice, and community health workers for anemia. Dr. Velásquez previously served as Peru’s Minister of Health (2014–2016), Director of Evaluation and Monitoring at the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion (MIDIS), and Director of the National Institute of Health, as well as consultancy positions across 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.