Guatemala Advances in the Fight Against Malnutrition Using Innovative Tools

• Joining forces with international experts and governmental entities, CATIE trained public officials in the use of the LiST tool to combat malnutrition and improve maternal and child health in Guatemala.

CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center), through the National Nutrition Information Platform project (PiNN) and in coordination with,the Global Nutrition Information Platforms (NIPN4NIS), successfully trained officials from the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance (MSPAS), the Secretariat of Food Security and Nutrition (SESAN), and the Vice Presidency of the Republic of Guatemala in the use of the Lives Saved Tool (LiST), designed by Johns Hopkins University.

This tool allows estimating the impact of increasing the coverage of certain community interventions in children under five years of age, which are carried out in health centers, taking into account data on neonatal mortality and risk factors.

The training was led by Marlene Rinnert and Tatiana Gil, consultants from Capacity for Nutrition (C4N/NIPN). Rinnert stated that the aim of the training was to understand the methods, hypotheses, and data sources used by LiST to calculate the impact of increasing the coverage of maternal and child nutrition interventions.

Claudia Barrillas, task manager of the European Union in Guatemala, noted that the European Union, a donor of the PiNN project, has had a long history and continuous and substantial support in the fight against chronic malnutrition and the promotion of food security. She also expressed her satisfaction with the participation of young officials in the training, which ensures generational renewal on this issue.

Marlon Figueroa, advisor and representative of the Vice Ministry of Primary Care of the MSPAS, invited the present officials to strengthen their technical capacities because he considers that with greater knowledge and better database management, better decisions can be made.

Gil added that the LiST tool allows making projections at different geographic scales, such as stillbirth and neonatal mortality, using data on demography, causes of death, national or regional health indicators, to estimate changes in population survival, the effects of major causes of death, thereby aiding evidence-based decision-making in maternal, neonatal, child, and nutrition health policies or interventions. In other words, "estimating the lives that have been saved by the potential impact of a program on maternal and child health," detailed Gil.

Jesús Bulux, advisor to the senior office of SESAN, highlighted that the goal of this tool is to project, with robust data, the potentialities of interventions in terms of saving lives, making it an interesting approach. Furthermore, Bulux added that in LiST, data are not simple descriptors of a situation but are tools for planning, which he considers an advantage as it allows for certain modeling with various assumptions.

According to Melissa Fuentes, normative technician of the National Reproductive Health Program of the MSPAS, the tool is useful, especially in the field of creating standards for maternal and neonatal care, to help reduce fetal and neonatal mortality at the country level, especially when there is not much data to base the strategies used.

Dinora Mendoza, technical assistant of the Department of Quality of Care of the Integrated Health Services Networks Directorate of the MSPAS, showed her satisfaction with the training. "In our case, and being a quality department, this tool will serve us to focus on the interventions that need to be done and identify how to work more as a team with different departments to have a greater impact," stated Mendoza.

In addition, Mónica Taylor, a member of the advisory body of the Vice Presidency, opined that the training was quite comprehensive since the LiST tool is an opportunity for us to have material related to the identification of projections to improve the health situation in our country.

At the end of the training, Julio López, CATIE representative in Guatemala, indicated that it is extremely important for this institution to support dynamic knowledge management processes, especially on innovative topics like the LiST tool. "These processes feed us back, give us new inputs to contribute to improving the living conditions of people who are in a vulnerable situation daily and are in our hands to improve," commented López.

López also thanked the training instructors for their valuable contribution to the country and the Delegation of the European Union in Guatemala for the trust placed in CATIE. "We have made every institutional, personal, professional, and technical effort to respond with tangible results and ensure these capabilities are institutionalized and sustainable," concluded López.