Good nutrition is essential for human well-being, yet malnutrition (undernutrition and obesity) affects nearly all countries worldwide.1 Many countries are achieving improvements in public health by reducing the prevalence of malnutrition in individuals and population groups.1 These efforts provide the opportunity to support similar improvements in other regions requiring systematic information sharing and knowledge exchange, recently highlighted at the 2016 Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) Summit held in conjunction with the United Nations in New York. At the GODAN Summit, we were fortunate to have a platform to highlight to visionaries from across the globe that a key priority for addressing malnutrition is to support medical and healthcare professionals to take an active role in promulgating healthy dietary behaviours in primary and preventative health care, whilst also advocating appropriate nutritional interventions in secondary care.