How to conduct a rapid nutrition assessment - Health Systems Trust

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Step 6: Collect the information After the tools have been developed and pre-tested you are ready to collect the information. Tasks must be clearly delegated to appropriate people with a clear timeframe for their completion. It is important for someone to take responsibility for monitoring the process to ensure that the data is being collected as planned. Step 7: Analyse information and write a report The findings of the NSA should be presented as clearly and concisely as possible. The way in which information is presented is very important 1 . This should be done in the form of a report which will form the basis for planning and evaluating the required nutrition interventions. The report should allow the “district nutrition team” to: ❖ Identify priority nutrition problems, and their causes ❖ Review the quality and coverage of existing nutrition activities in maternal and child health services ❖ Review the quality and coverage of existing INP activities in the district ❖ Identify community and public service resources for combating nutrition problems in the district ❖ Define target groups, set nutrition objectives and identify strategies ❖ Identify indicators for monitoring progress with the nutrition programme If this is a follow up NSA then important areas of progress or deterioration over the past year in the district should be identified and reasons for these changes highlighted. Step 8: Disseminate the Information Once the report is finalised, it is important to disseminate it and make it available to key people. There are many other ways of disseminating the findings of the NSA: ❖ Make short and easy-to-read policy and programme briefs on key findings and recommendations; ❖ Make oral presentations to key decision-makers, managers, health workers, community organisations ❖ Organise a dissemination workshop for decision-makers, managers, health workers, community organisations ❖ Write press releases for the local media, including local and / or community media stations The wider the dissemination the more chance there is of the NSA leading to meaningful discussion and actions. 10 1 The training manual: ‘Integrating Nutrition into Development Programmes’ has a whole section on these basic skills.
Section 3: Information for Conducting a Nutrition Situation Assessment This section reviews in greater detail the type of information required for the NSA, the sources of information and how to collect it. It is structured according to the information pyramid discussed in Section 2. Not all the blocks in the information pyramid are equally important, and this manual emphasises the important information within those blocks. LEVEL 1 1.1 The Geography and Mapping of the Health District A simple map which outlines the boundaries of the health district, the major roads and rivers, clinics and mobile points, the hospital, the offices for education, agriculture and welfare and the major settlements is a very useful start. The map can be further improved with information about the location of the district relative to the nearest towns as well as the physical attributes of the district (i.e. rural, hilly, state of the roads etc.). Develop the map in consultation with different sectors as they will have maps with different sorts of information available. For instance, the Department of Education should have a map of the schools in the district. By bringing the different sources of information together the team can build up a comprehensive picture of the activities and resources in a district. Finally, for specific local communities, community mapping exercises can be a quick and accurate means to get information about the structure of the community (see box 3). This sort of exercise can be done in conjunction with local clinics which can use these exercises to help define their catchment population, or mapping can be done with community groups that may be involved in district projects. The manual ‘Mapping for Primary Health Care’ from Management for Sciences for Health has a number of examples of performing mapping exercises. Box 3: Mapping exercise in Hlabisa After initial meetings with community leaders it was decided to hold a community meeting at the local school. To begin the meeting the facilitators asked the community to draw a map. There were thirty participants of whom about twenty were women. They readily took up the challenge of drawing a map on the ground using different colour powders to symbolise the roads and rivers, and stones to mark the various kraals. They were asked to mark important landmarks in the community. In this way the team gained useful insights into what the community perceived as important structures. With little intervention from the facilitators they completed their map after about an hour. This was then checked by the elderly men and women who had not participated as fully during the exercise; they picked up a few points which the others had missed. The facilitators were then able to complete a rapid demographic survey of the community by asking for information about who lived in the various households located on the community map. 11
Page 1: HOW TO CONDUCT A RAPID NUTRITION SI
Page 4 and 5: Written by: Mickey Chopra & David M
Page 6 and 7: Preface Designing and implementing
Page 8 and 9: LEVEL 4 ...........................
Page 10 and 11: Figure 1: The UNICEF conceptual fra
Page 12 and 13: Section 2: Steps in Conducting a Nu
Page 14 and 15: Step 2: Build a common vision for t
Page 16 and 17: The next level aims to establish th
Page 20 and 21: 1.2 The Community Composition (Demo
Page 22 and 23: Table 2: Assessment of Household Fo
Page 24 and 25: 2.3 Care Food and health services a
Page 26 and 27: Primary level (clinic/CHC’s/ Hosp
Page 28 and 29: Activities ❖ The current set of a
Page 30 and 31: LEVEL 4 4.1 Nutrition Status There
Page 33 and 34: APPENDIX 1: SAMPLE OBSERVATION CHEC
Page 35: APPENDIX 3: EXAMPLE OF A SCORING SY

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