PANEL 8.5 NATIONAL EVALUATION PLATFORMS: POTENTIAL FOR NUTRITION
JENNIFER BRYCE AND COLLEAGUES G
overnments need reliable and consistent data to report progress under national,
regional, and international accountability frameworks for nutrition, such as the World Health Assembly Global Targets 2025 (WHO 2012b). The National Evaluation Platform (NEP) is a systematic approach being used in Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, and Tanza- nia to identify, compile, and analyze existing high-quality data from diverse sources across sectors, in order to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of health and nutrition programs (Victora, Black, et al. 2011). Country-led and country-owned, the NEP approach offers a core set of evaluation methods and builds sustainable national capacity to develop evi- dence-based answers to pressing program and policy questions and track progress toward national and global scale-up targets. With support from the Government of
Canada, the NEP brings together relevant, high-quality district-level data from a range of sources, including national surveys and routine reporting systems and databases. It is updated as additional data become available.
It also supports analytic approaches that address the contributions of nutrition and health interventions in settings where tradi- tional evaluation designs are not possible. For example, the NEP can address multisectoral integration by assessing various programs together over time (such as management of acute malnutrition; vitamin A supplemen- tation; water, sanitation, and hygiene; and immunizations). Finally, it empowers countries to build homegrown, sustainable capacity to answer complex program and policy questions and to hold themselves accountable. A public sector stakeholder serves as the “NEP home institution” that maintains the data and builds the capacity of other public sector monitoring and evaluation stakeholders to develop and use the NEP. The effectiveness of the NEP will be judged by the extent to which the evidence produced is incorporated into decisionmaking processes. One year of use in the four coun- tries has already produced important lessons:
• Governments welcome the focus on program evaluation. In all four
countries, health and nutrition program leaders welcomed the NEP as a means of (1) bringing together existing data to go beyond routine monitoring, (2) address- ing questions on the relative effective- ness of implementation strategies, and (3) strengthening in-country agenda set- ting relative to donor agenda setting.
• Data on nutrition programs are scarce. A mechanism is needed to bring together available data across sectors, assess their quality, and promote their use in answer- ing questions about program needs or the effectiveness of implementation.
• Countries’ capacity to assess and analyze data is limited. In most cases, analyses of anthropometric data and child mortality are conducted by external insti- tutions. The national institutions respon- sible for health, nutrition, and statistics reported that increasing capacity in these areas is a top priority.
Mechanisms
Committed actors need a mechanism through which to exercise their agency on behalf of nutrition. Panel 8.5 summarizes experiences to date with National Evaluation Platforms, which are being piloted by four African countries. These platforms are helping develop the capacity within countries to use existing data to promote accountability more effectively.
Similarly, research can be a mechanism for data managers, analysts, and scientists to promote accountability for nutrition. Panel 8.6 makes the case that African research priorities are not sufficiently solution oriented or driven by African needs and that the data generated are scattered and often inaccessible. The authors propose a number of investments in research systems to guide action and strengthen accountability for improved nutrition.
ACTIONS & ACCOUNTABILITY TO ACCELERATE THE WORLD’S PROGRESS ON NUTRITION
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