Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) Reporting Package – Dissemination of tools and key advocacy messages

WHAT IS THE HUMANITARIAN NEED?

The absence of evidence on the effectiveness of supplementary feeding programmes (SFPs) due to unsystematic, incomplete and incomparable data across the humanitarian community is reason for biased decision making, ineffective and unresponsive programming and reduced accountability to emergency affected communities[1].

The need for improved tools in reporting and monitoring to facilitate better utilisation of data for decision making on all components of community based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) will be addressed with this innovation.

WHAT IS THE INNOVATIVE SOLUTION?

Diffusion: Rolling out the innovative online CMAM Report software to the wider nutrition community will contribute towards the resolution of described problems. It will do this by providing a sustainable system that is widely accessible through a web based and tablet based platform supported by training materials. It will support accurate programme data collection and utilisation of data for decision making at scale.

Improved monitoring and evaluation through the use of this pioneering tool will maximise the efficacy and effectiveness of CMAM programmes through facilitating improved utilisation and analysis of information for programme management.

Through standardisation of reporting, CMAM Report presents the potential to dramatically transform practice within the humanitarian nutrition sector. We are currently unable to compare programmes. If we are able to extrapolate lessons from well-functioning programmes and apply them to poorly functioning programmes, practice can become both more efficient and more effective.

WHAT ARE THE EXPECTED OUTCOMES?

Training package, e-learning and software manuals in English and French will be updated and will complement the CMAM Report software.
Peer review publication on the CMAM data analysis collected through the data base is anticipated.