Landscape Survey: Understanding the Monitoring of Nutrition Assessment, Counseling, and Support

Author(s): MEASURE Evaluation

Year: 2018

Abstract:

The Nutrition Assessment, Counseling, and Support (NACS) framework is a systems approach for integrating nutrition in routine health service delivery at the facility and community levels, and it has three primary components: nutrition assessment and classification, nutrition counseling, and nutrition support within a health care continuum.

In 2013, the Partnership for HIV-Free Survival (PHFS) launched an initiative—integrating NACS—in six countries: Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. The initiative was designed to assist with existing national efforts to improve antenatal and postnatal HIV care and to increase maternal, infant, and child nutrition through the optimal uptake of World Health Organization guidelines on breastfeeding and HIV using quality-improvement methods.

A set of harmonized nutrition and HIV indicators was developed in 2012 to assist in the monitoring and evaluation of NACS. To better understand how these harmonized indicators are collected, used, and reported within the NACS framework, MEASURE Evaluation—funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief—conducted a landscape assessment in 2014 of NACS implementation in 12 of 16 priority NACS countries. This research aligns with USAID’s goals to prevent child and maternal deaths and to control the HIV epidemic, and also with the global 90-90-90 targets.

This report contains findings from the landscape assessment, which have also helped shape ongoing discussions and activities related to the overlap between nutrition and HIV, including a multipronged independent evaluation of the PHFS program.