Review of the nutrition : surveys and surveillance project (no. 931-1064)

The project implementing agencies are the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Cornell Nutritional Surveillance Program (CNSP). The evaluation covers the period 1984-1988. Overall, the project has been highly successful in implementing a large number of surveys throughout the world. Survey results have been very useful in documenting nutritional status, and have made a significant contribution not only to nutrition planning, but also to planning in the areas of health, agriculture, and economics. CDC was instrumental in planning and implementing the surveys, training host country personnel, and maintaining high scientific standards for the assessment of nutritional status. CNSP performed well in providing short-term TA and training, in carrying out regional workshops, and in publishing materials. On the negative side, the project has not made satisfactory progress towards implementing national nutritional surveillance systems, neither in terms of actual implementation nor in terms of the development of methods appropriate for the resources available in most developing countries. Progress has been particularly disappointing in developing timely warning and interventions systems for preventing extreme reductions of food consumption. Possible reasons for this shortcoming are: (1) an arbitrary division of labor between the two contractors; (2) a project design which prevented stronger linkages between survey- based baseline data and surveillance methodology; and (3) a need to develop more effective means for motivating country decisionmakers towards the use of the available information. CNSP's successful collaborations with the Government of Indonesia and UNICEF in East and Southern Africa should be studied more thoroughly to determine how this model has worked so that it can be institutionalized and promulgated in other regions.