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About Essential Nutrition Actions at Critical Stages in the Life Cycle of Women and Children
Practices and Behaviours Self Assessment Tools These tools list recommended nutrition practices and behaviours at family level as well as use of services and ask the user to assess himself / herself against them.
Community Level:
The following Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA) performance self-assessment tools are recommended for use at community level at 5 contact points:
These tools are currently under development
Note: Community-based performance self-assessment tools for use by village-health-team members, group leaders, extension workers, etc. to look at key nutrition behaviours at critical stages in the life cycle of children and women.
The Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA) performance self-assessment tools are divided into 3 columns:
First column provides the recommended behaviours at each critical stage in the life of children and women. Additional clarifications can be obtained from the global recommendations on optimal maternal, infant and young child feeding practices.
Second column asks you to rate yourself. The rating is divided as following:
0 = insufficient; 1 = fair; 2 = good; 3 = very good; 4 = excellent.
The rate should help you to identify the weakest areas in your services.
For each contact point, rate all items included in each topic and add the scores to obtain the total of each topic. At the end, sum up the totals of each topic to obtain the total of each contact point.
Third column asks you to discuss and identify key gaps in recommended behaviours for each critical stage in the life of children and women. The checklist is not asking
you what the recommended behaviour is, but actually what happens, why and how it can be improved.
Identify the topics with the lowest scores and within the topics identify the weakest items.
Ask yourself ‘why?’ and determine the main gaps.
Gaps may be found in the following areas:
- Access to nutrition services and supply
- Situation of the household/community (social, economical, etc.)
- Knowledge and skills
- Cultural beliefs and practices
- Others
Knowing ‘why?’ should help to determine steps for improvement. You should be able to prioritize key changes you want to address in the near future.
02 January, 2009
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