Surveys or reports from program sites provided by supervisors or evaluators on the presence of (or number of) staff trained to provide NAEC services using a census-based approach (i.e., from all program sites in the target area). The data collector should ask the manager at each site if any staff members have attended a MOH-approved course on nutrition and HIV and establish a list of names with their professional positions. Next, the data collector should follow up individually with the listed service providers to confirm that the information is correct. If at least one service provider at the site is confirmed to have attended a MOH-approved training, the site is recorded as meeting the requirements of the indicator.  Where the data are available, the indicator can be disaggregated by province or district, urban/rural location, type of facility (public, private, community-based), and client characteristics (age group, sex, most-at-risk populations).

Data Source(s):

Surveys, reports, and interviews from program sites and staff trained in NEAC.

Purpose:

The availability of appropriately trained service providers helps ensure that NAEC is provided at HIV care and treatment sites, that staff perform NAEC appropriately and give clients comprehensive and correct information.  Given the growing recognition of the important role nutrition plays in the care and support of PLHIV and the scaling up NEAC services into HIV care and support programs, adequate training of providers and harmonized approaches to monitoring and evaluation specific for nutrition and HIV are essential.  This indicator can provide information on overall training coverage, distribution of trained providers, workload constraints, and future needs for training and funding. Additional background on NEAC, a conceptual framework, process for developing an M&E system, and related indicators can be found in FANTA (2008).

Issue(s):

Counting the number or presence of NEAC-trained staff alone does not capture knowledge or how well the staff are able to integrate the training with their professional roles.  Added indicators for quality of training, such as knowledge and follow-up on skills retention can be useful. Furthermore, it cannot be determined from this indicator if there is an adequate number of trained providers (in nutrition and HIV) for a particular site based on that site’s HIV care and treatment client load.

References:

FANTA (Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance) Project. 2007. Recommendation for the Nutrient Requirements for People Living with HIV/AIDS, Washington, DC: USAID/Academy for Educational Development. https://www.unscn.org/web/archives_resources/files/Nutrient_Requirements_HIV_Feb07.pdf