The National Nutrition Council held a consultation workshop of its regional and central offices, and national partners on 01 August 2018 and 02 October 2018, respectively at the NNC Board Room to discuss the development of the first complementary nutrition research agenda of the Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition (PPAN).
Representatives of the NNC regional and central offices brainstormed to identify research topics and themes in their respective regions and units to be included in the agenda for 2018-2022. Some themes are along nutrition programs in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas or GIDAs, indigenous people concern and implementation of the First 1000 Days program, to name a few.
The consultation with partners involved the members of the newly created Nutrition Research Technical Working Group (TWG) and other partners from funding agencies, national government agencies, and UN agencies, among others which identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in creating an enabling environment for nutrition research.
The creation of the PPAN Research Agenda 2018-2022 is a result of the analysis in 2016 of the PPAN 2011-2016 which concluded that research agenda was not evident in the previous PPAN. A clear set of research activities for the next medium term PPAN can provide evidence for the formulation of a robust policies and technical guidance in operational adjustments of programs of the PPAN. Thus, the PPAN 2017-2022 identified the development of the research agenda as one of the programmatic strategies of the PPAN and one of the key outputs of the Program on Policy Development for Food and Nutrition.
With the technical assistance of the teams of consultants from Alliance for Improving Health Outcomes, Inc., the NNC through the Nutrition Research TWG is in the process of reviewing the draft of the research agenda, and after which, will be revised for the approval of the NNC Technical Committee and endorsement to the NNC Governing Board. The NNC is expected to launch the PPAN Research 2018-2022 in early 2019 to be fully disseminated in the academe, research institutions in the development sector, health, nutrition and agriculture -- for alignment of research works; funding agencies and international partners and collaborators.
The research agenda will be significant in better planning based on informed-and-evidence assisted decisions in moving forward the national nutrition plan, PPAN 2017-2022 to achieve its identified outcomes and sub-outcomes. (Daniel G. Salunga)
