The National Information Platforms for Nutrition (NIPN) : data for better nutrition

WHAT ?

The National Information Platforms for Nutrition (NIPN) is a global initiative providing support to countries to strengthen their information systems for nutrition and to improve the analysis of data to better inform the strategic decisions they are faced with to prevent malnutrition and its consequences.

The NIPN initiative is designed to support countries:

1. to strengthen their capacity to bring together existing information on nutritional status with information on factors that influence nutritional outcomes, including policies, programmes and investments, in order to track progress towards international global targets;
2. to analyse data to understand better how malnutrition can be prevented;
3. and to inform national policies and improve programmes.

WHO ?

It is driven by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Cooperation and Development and it is also supported by the United Kingdom Department for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

HOW ?

The function of a National Information Platform for Nutrition is to inform policies and programmes for improving human nutrition by bringing together and analysing information and data from all sectors that can influence nutrition (such as health; agriculture and food; water and sanitation; social protection...).

To do so, the NIPN approach will provide a platform to:

• raise questions governments need to answer to develop or refine their policies and programmes;
• bring together existing information needed to answer those questions, including indicators of nutritional outcomes, published literature, contextual information and data on programmes and investments from all sectors;
• analyse data and interpret results in the light of current knowledge to try to answer the questions;
• disseminate findings and evidence to policy makers and programme planners.

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WHERE ?

The initiative currently involves Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Laos, Niger, Uganda and Zambia.

 

What is new in 2018 ?

• A Mid-Term Review was done
• Lunch of the NIPN in 3 countries
  • Lao PDR, 5 october 2018
  • Ethiopia, on May 31^st, 2018
  • Uganda, on March 15^th, 2018
• 1st NIPN Technical Gathering took place in Paris from the 3^rd to the 5^th of July 2018.

The purpose of this meeting is to gather NIPN representatives of NIPN national teams from the 10 countries of the initiative to, among others, discuss implementation needs, opportunities and bottlenecks, share experience, and learn from others.

• A new Team Leader

Marti Van Liere was appointed on June 15, 2018 as the new team leader for the Global Support Facility.

Marti has 30 years of international experience in nutrition and development, in non-for-profit and private sectors, as well as in research.

• A second NIPN Expert Advisory Group (EAG) took place in Brussels in March 2018 as side event to the Nutrition Seminar
• The start of the work on Platforms in 6 more countries
  • Work in Guatemala and Niger had started in the second half of 2017
  • 6 more countries begun operations in 2018: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire,Kenya, Laos and Uganda.

Visit the NIPN website : http://www.nipn-nutrition-platforms.org/?lang=en