Supporting Improved Nutrition with Better Data in Madagascar

Good nutrition is critical for cognitive and physical health, laying a strong foundation to ensure a strong population to advance Madagascar’s growth and development. Evidence shows that improving nutrition requires a multi-sectoral approach involving stakeholders from across health, economic development, agriculture, and other sectors. CHISU is partnering with the National Nutrition Office in Madagascar to centralize nutrition data to improve data collection—and most importantly, data use—to strengthen nutrition programming. Centralized nutrition data allows for more robust and well-defined data dashboards, facilitating decision making, eliminating reporting delays, and connecting the diverse nutrition stakeholders for better consistency and data integration. 

CHISU has helped define indicators for Madagascar’s Plan National d’Action Multisectorielle pour la Nutrition, the country’s Multisectoral National Action Plan for Nutrition, and standardize calculation methods and collection frequency. In addition, CHISU is working to optimize data collection through a centralized architecture and an interoperability mediator to define standards that allows data exchange across nutrition stakeholders, allowing for seamless data integration across multiple multiple nutrition systems. We are also strengthening local capacity through nutrition data entry and analysis training to ensure optimal use of data for decision making. These efforts strengthen coordination among nutrition stakeholders in Madagascar, providing a reliable central source of nutrition-related data across multiple sectors.