How can we advance nutrition measurement?

WHO and UNICEF developed IYCF global guidelines in 2002, which describe recommendations for optimal breastfeeding and complementary feeding to improve child survival. WHO published a set of eight core and seven optional IYCF indicators in 2008. These indicators are used widely and have helped countries assess progress and improved harmonization of IYCF data. In the past year, there have been increasing efforts to reflect on how IYCF indicators are operationalized and whether modifications are needed to improve current indicators of IYCF practice, eliminate biases, and address new issues. During the consultation, participants learned about current efforts to measure IYCF counselling coverage in program evaluations and large-scale surveys. Discussion followed on core and expanded survey questions that could best capture IYCF counselling. The consultation identified three priorities for measurement: breastfeeding counseling during antenatal care, breastfeeding counselling in the first month, and IYCF (either breastfeeding or complementary feeding) counselling in the first two years.

Deliberations from the Joint Consultation on Approaches to Measure Coverage of Nutrition Counselling Interventions directly fed into the Technical Consultation on Measuring Nutrition in Population-Based Household Surveys and Associated Facility Assessments. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), UNICEF, and WHO co-hosted the event. The event had three objectives:

1. To review how nutrition data, including indicators and data sources, are currently being used by different stakeholders at global and country levels and identify the gaps that remain in their information needs that could be filled through household or facility surveys.
2. To review recommendations from recent technical consultations for improving collection of anthropometric and micronutrient status data in large-scale household surveys.
3. To identify ways to augment, improve and/or harmonize questions about nutrition intervention coverage, IYCF and other diet-related practices using the core questionnaires of the major household and facility surveys as a starting point.