Work with client countries and development partners to identify practical mechanisms (including indicators) for monitoring nutritional and welfare outcomes and impacts of food crises and mitigation programs, and work with them to implement those mechanisms and to report the results.
Monitoring nutritional and welfare outcomes. The main welfare outcomes from the crisis poverty and malnutrition were not sufficiently tracked to assess the welfare impact of the short-run response. While theory and the Bank's policy guidance provide a framework to assess the impacts of food crisis on the welfare and nutritional status of key population groups, this requires country-specific assessments. Data scarcity is acute for most low-income countries. Thus, few GFRP countries assessed the impact of the food crisis on the poor. Some social safety net projects under the GFRP described mechanisms for the selection of beneficiaries, mostly using a combination of geographic and then community targeting, a practical approach that can produce serviceable targeting in data-constrained environments. However, the majority of projects did not specify actual and expected program "coverage" to assess the likely contribution of the project to the population in need of assistance. Most project documents state that project activities were targeted to food-insecure areas, but indicators only provide numbers of children to receive food in school or numbers of hospital patients to be fed.
Original Response: Agreed: Management agrees with the importance of tracking the impacts of food crises and of mitigation mechanisms on the welfare and nutritional status of key population groups. This will require country-specific assessments. Management will work with client countries and development partners to develop practical mechanisms for monitoring nutritional and welfare outcomes and impacts of food crisis mitigation programs. Specifically, Bank staff will work with client countries requesting assistance in handling food price crises to identify feasible indicators and design practical plans for data collection and analysis to implement the monitoring and reporting of the results of food price crisis mitigation programs.
Action 4: Develop guidelines to assist with identifying appropriate indicators and tracking mechanisms to monitor nutritional and welfare outcomes of populations affected by food price crises in order to report on the results of food price crisis mitigation efforts.
The guidelines will build on applicable extent guidelines of development partners (e.g., WFP, FAO) and may include advice on building or strengthening surveillance systems to monitor the health and nutritional status of the most vulnerable identifying/including new indicators for use during crisis such as dietary diversity indices for specific subgroups (e.g., young children 6 to 24 mo) reduction in number of meals for all household members consumption of non-usual foods such as insects reduced expenditures on essential household items, removal of children from school, etc.
Indicator: Guidelines delivered.
Baseline: No guidelines currently exist.
Target: Guidelines delivered and posted on the intranet. Pending alignment with the introduction of the Global Practices the guidelines will be extended to regions through one or more workshops.
Timeline: Outline of the guidelines prepared by the end FY14, guidelines delivered by the end of FY15.
There has also been progress in the implementation of the recommendation assisting countries to identify appropriate indicators and tracking mechanisms to monitor nutritional and welfare outcomes of populations affected by food price crises to report on the results of food price crisis mitigation efforts. Two global practices, Health, Nutrition, and Population (HNP) and Social Protection and Labor (SPL), have completed the guidelines: Strengthening Surveillance of the Nutritionally Vulnerable During Food Price Crises. These guidelines have also been peer reviewed by the leading experts in the field and discussed with the both HNP and SPL GPs Global Leads. IEG found the guidelines in high quality and satisfactory. The guidelines have posted in on the intranet since July 2017, and further dissemination activities are underway.
Please see attached guidelines (improved surveillance of the nutritionally vulnerable during Food Price Crises) to help identify appropriate indicators and tracking mechanisms to monitor nutritional and welfare outcomes of populations affected by food price crises in order to report on the results of food price crisis mitigation efforts.
There has been progress in the implementation of the recommendation to identify practical mechanisms (including indicators) for monitoring nutritional and welfare outcomes and impacts of food crises and mitigation programs. Two global practices, Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) and Social Protection and Labor (SPL), have been working together in conducting and compiling case studies to build on the guidelines. A parallel effort involved the World Bank Group's participation in the finalization of a new nutrition indicator - the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) - in FY15. An external consultant, reporting to the above two global practices, has consolidated two sets of guidelines into a single set of consolidated notes that will be shared with WBG staff and client country policy makers and program implementers in January 2017. As in the previous recommendation (number 273), it is important to have a meeting in the last quarter of FY17 with the participation of OPCS, HNP, SPL, and IEG to review progress and prepare a road map for the full implementation of this recommendation.
Guidelines are in draft, funding having been secured for this at end-FY16 and the concept note for finalizing the guidelines having been reviewed/approved by the Global Leads for Nutrition and Social Safety Nets.
(HNP GP and SP/L GP). Please see attached files (CN and Response to IEG note 2016).
The consultant, with oversight from a Senior SP Economist and Senior Nutrition Specialist, has completed the attached draft that combines the two sets of guidelines into a single consolidated note . This was deemed most useful to WBG staff and client country policymakers and program implementers.
It is anticipated that the guidelines will be completed, reviewed, finalized and ready for dissemination through SecureNutrition Knowledge Platform, the HNP and SP/L GPs, along with other communications channels by January 2017.
There has been limited progress in the implementation of the recommendation to identify practical mechanisms (including indicators) for monitoring nutritional and welfare outcomes and impacts of food crises and mitigation programs. Two global practices, Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) and Social Protection and Labor (SPL), are working together in conducting and compiling case studies to build on the guidelines. A parallel effort involved the World Bank Groupâs participation in the finalization of a new nutrition indicatorâthe Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W)âin fiscal year 2015. It is important to have a meeting in the second half of fiscal year 2016 with the participation of Operations Policy and Country Services, HNP, SPL, and the Independent Evaluation Group to review progress on the full implementation of the recommendation.
As described in the update for Ref.#0273, the HNP and SLP GPs worked together to compile case studies of nutrition-sensitive social protection programs and approaches to gain insights into experience with assessing the nutritional impacts on the populations most at risk from crises such as the global food crisis of the mid-to-late 2000s. Further analysis of the case studies of operational experience will take place in FY16 and inform the development of practical mechanisms/indicators for monitoring nutritional and welfare outcomes of food crises and mitigation programs. A parallel effort involved the WBG's participation in the finalization of a new nutrition indicator, Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W) in FY15. This indicator, along with other important indicators of dietary diversity/quality such as Minimum Dietary Diversity for Children and optimal infant and young child feeding practices, are some of the potential indicators (along with an anthropometric indicator such as low weight-for-height or wasting) that may be the most useful for the monitoring exercise in future crises. Information on the new indicator is attached. It is anticipated that the development/finalization of guidelines - building on the work undertaken in FY15 - will be completed in late FY16 or early FY17.
There has been limited progress in implementing the recommendation. It is important to have a meeting in the second half of fiscal 2015 with participation of OPCS, HNP GP, Social Protection GP and IEG to review the progress and full implementation of recommendation.
The proposed action to meet the identified need to better help client countries to track the impacts of food crises and of mitigation mechanisms on the welfare and nutritional status of key population groups includes the development of practical suggestions to monitor nutritional status of the most vulnerable populations. Identifyingindicators and designing practical plans for data collection and analysis to implement the monitoring and reporting of the results of food price crisis mitigation programs are seen as priority actions. As noted in the IEG report, safety nets and social protection programs offer an important avenue to achieve better monitoring. The HNP Global Practice has begun to engage with the Social Protection Global Practice on issues of nutrition-sensitive social protection programs, and under this initiative (particularly through the SecureNutrition Knowledge Platform with its FY15 -FY17 emphasis on social protection and nutrition), it is anticipated that research/planning re. practical mechanisms for monitoring nutrition outcomes will be carried out through cross-GP efforts in FY15.