Groundbreaking data helps tackle child malnutrition
In Honduras, 62 percent of the population live below the national poverty line - with women and children among the most vulnerable groups. Widespread poverty is at the root of chronic malnutrition and food insecurity: about one in four children are stunted, or chronically malnourished. With increased exposure to extreme climate events and longer-lasting droughts, impacting agriculture and food production, an integrated response is needed to tackle the many issues contributing to child malnutrition.
UNDP'S Response
UNDP provides a key contribution with the ‘SDG combo’ underpinned by groundbreaking ways of collecting and combining data. Feedback data on services, service level data from health providers and NGOs, and geo-referenced administrative registries that collect hundreds of indicators, help map the needs of millions of people. With this analysis, the ‘combo’ zooms in on the deepest pockets of poverty to provide a comprehensive package of interventions that address all aspects of child malnutrition. Honduras is now looking to incorporate the combo in its new Gender Strategy and include it as a pilot project in over 20 municipalities. In 2019, UNDP also conducted a teenage pregnancy study using the Combos approach, which identified social protection programmes that can be rolled out in specific communities to reduce young women’s vulnerability to pregnancies.