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In a country like the Philippines, which is frequently hit by natural and man-made disasters, having early warning systems is crucial. Access to such information ensures that vulnerable communities are equipped to make timely, evidence-based decisions before crises occur. To highlight the link between agriculture and nutrition, one of FAO’s main priorities is to strengthen and support food and nutrition security information and early warning systems. With funding from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), FAO is working with the National Nutrition Council (NNC) and Barangay Nutrition Scholars (BNS) to improve the reliability of an existing electronic BNS tool to help communities improve food and nutrition security monitoring.
Operation Timbang (OPT) Plus is an example of an existing information system at the barangay level in the Philippines, which is the local Filipino name for a village, district or ward.
Provides data on the food utilization status of the community. More specifically, it provides information on the level of food insecurity in the community and the prevalence of malnutrition among vulnerable children.
OPT Plus is an annual weight and height measurement campaign conducted by the National Nutrition Council (NNC) through its network of Barangay Nutrition Scholars (BNS). BNS are volunteer health workers who serve on the front lines of nutrition service delivery across the country. Data from this annual campaign, which has been in place since the 1970s, is usually collected from each barangay during the first quarter of each year and aggregated at the city, provincial, and district levels. Once collected at the barangay and city levels, data from OPT Plus is immediately transmitted to local chief executives and nutrition councils for planning and response.
Data Collection Methods
A key step in OPT Plus data collection is determining each child’s age in months, which is calculated manually by BNS based on the child’s date of birth and visit date. After measuring weight and height, nutritional status is also determined manually (one child at a time) using a reference table based on the World Health Organization Child Growth Standards. Each child’s information is then recorded on a standard paper form.
The overall quality of malnutrition prevalence estimates from OPT Plus has been criticized because the survey involves a large number of respondents and is cumbersome, time-consuming, and prone to calculation errors.
In 2010, the National Nutrition Council developed a prototype of an Excel-based electronic tool, called the “BNS Tool”, designed to address the difficulties of manual calculations, records and reporting. However, the original version had some limitations. Nevertheless, FAO recognized the potential of the electronic tool to improve the efficiency of the OPT Plus process.
Improving OPT Plus
FAO, through its UNICEF-funded Early Warning System for Food and Nutrition Security (EWS-FNS) project in Capiz and Aklan provinces, saw an opportunity to field-test the electronic tool. Over a period of 18 months, the tool was tested and received valuable feedback from local partners as well as the National Nutrition Council.
The electronic tool has several new features, including automatic calculations, nutritional classification and reporting. For example, it is now easy to prepare classified lists of severely malnourished children, thus facilitating follow-up care.
Now known as e-OPT Plus tool, an electronic system that has become an important part of FAO’s wider EWS-FNS project in other parts of the Philippines. To improve data quality, the tool also includes a number of error-checking features, such as checks for double counting and out-of-range values due to data entry errors. Perhaps the feature most appreciated by users so far is the tool’s ability to integrate municipal and provincial OPT Plus data in a relatively short time. This makes the preparation of reports much easier, and more timely and accurate. It now also includes pre-formatted and printable reports and formats for different users, aimed at encouraging greater use of data at the local level.
“Increasing the reliability of OPT will also facilitate its use in planning and decision-making. More broadly, greater awareness and appreciation of this type of data, especially at the village level, will enable local governments to make early predictions, plan accordingly and intervene in a timely manner, thereby enabling communities to improve their chances of achieving better food and nutrition security,” said Dr Celestino Habito, Jr, FAO Specialist in Food and Nutrition Security Monitoring Systems.
Mainstream OPT Plus
In order to further Electronic OPT+ To implement the tool, FAO provided technical assistance to the NNC by drafting a reader-friendly manual with step-by-step guidelines for using the tool. In recent months, more municipalities have begun using the e-OPT tool. In Capiz and Aklan, for example, provincial health officials have begun disseminating the e-OPT tool provincewide. FAO has also been providing training to local government staff in preparation for next year’s OPT Plus survey. Working hand in hand with the NNC, FAO hopes to eventually adopt this tool nationwide.
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