Poshan Weekly is a knowledge dissemination tool intended to share research, evidence, policy and programme guidelines as well as tools on Maternal and Child Nutrition with colleagues around India.
The right to adequate health and nutrition is fundamental for growth and development of every child and therefore, requires a commitment from all levels of governance. The Members of Parliament are democratically elected to represent the 543 Parliamentary Constituencies of the Lok Sabha in India and are responsible for identifying and fulfilling the aspirations of their constituents through impactful policy interventions. Policy advocacy and engagement driven towards better health and nutrition outcomes for children could be substantially enhanced by readily and routinely providing data on key population health, nutrition and development indicators for the Parliamentary Constituencies of the Lok Sabha. Data collection and policy implementation at the level of Parliamentary Constituencies could bring greater accountability to policy focus and actions at grassroots. However, there are no estimates available at the Parliamentary Constituencies level to help Members of Parliament monitor the performance of critical policy indicators in their respective constituencies.
Making Parliamentary Constituencies level estimates available can significantly support the Members of Parliament and their respective Parliamentary Constituencies’ stakeholders and constituents, enabling clearer, evidence-based discussion around progress being made across key policy initiatives of the union and state governments of India. In this issue of PoshanWeekly, we are happy to share an interactive policy dashboard for India’s 543 Parliamentary Constituencies (PCs) by India Policy Insights (IPI), the flagship project of the Geographic Insights Lab at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard University. This tool provides health, nutrition, and development data specifically designed to align with the political units represented by India’s Members of Parliament. The details could be found here. The new PC Tracker provides performance data for over 90 policy indicators, including:
Most current indicator levels (2021)
5-year change values (2016 to 2021)
A new mapping of indicators to key Government of India (GOI) programs
A new downloadable summary factsheet for each Parliamentary Constituencies (all indicators)
We hope that these evidence-based insights from Parliamentary Constituencies level data on this public platform will be helpful in informing overall health and nutrition advocacy and implementation of initiatives effectively at the grassroots.
Kind Regards,
Arjan De Wagt,
Chief, Nutrition Programme | UNICEF India
Citation:
1.Geographic Insights Lab. NFHS Policy Tracker for Parliamentary Constituencies. 2022. Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard, Cambridge MA, USA.
Workshop on Hand Hygiene in New Delhi | Reports now available! (as covered in previous issue of PoshanWeekly on Global Hand Hygiene Day)
UNICEF India has partnered with multiple agencies including IRC, SIGMA and India Sanitation Coalition (ISC) – FICCI, and carried out 4 studies and initiatives, covering diverse aspects in the domain of handwashing. To share the insights and discuss critical issues on the way forward on the ground, UNICEF Delhi is hosted a one-day workshop on 17.10.2022. The detailed reports are now available below:
