National nutrition surveillance programmes in 18 countries in South-East Asia and Western Pacific Regions: a systematic scoping review

Objective: To identify and analyse ongoing nutrition-related surveillance programmes led/funded by national authorities in Southeast Asia (SEA) and China.

Methods: Systematic scoping review by searching academic databases, a manual search of the grey literature, and consultations with national health/nutrition officials iteratively using Arksey and O’Malley’s six-stage framework. We included LMIC member states of the WHO SEA region and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and China, with no restrictions on publication type nor language. Three reviewers independently screened, selected and extracted publications. We analysed the included programmes by purposively adapting the CDC public health surveillance evaluation framework.

Findings: We identified 83 surveillance programmes in 18 countries that repeatedly collect, analyse, and disseminate data on nutrition and/or related indicators. Seventeen countries implemented a national periodic survey that exclusively collects nutrition- and/or diet outcome indicators often alongside internationally-linked survey programmes which vary in scope. Scope (nutrition- outcomes), covered subpopulation groups and monitoring frequency vary substantially across countries. We found limited integration of food environment/wider food system indicators in these programmes, nor programmes across the food system that are purposively monitoring nutrition-sensitive data. There is also limited surveillance of nutrition in urban deprived areas. Elderly (older than 70) are generally missing from nutrition-outcome surveillance in ten countries. While most surveillance programmes are digitised, implement measures to ensure high data quality and report evidence of flexibility, many are inconsistently implemented and rely on external agency’s financial support.

Conclusion: Future research and development should focus on expanding the scope of timely monitoring to include malnutrition in all its forms in all population groups and incorporate, or link nutrition outcome monitoring with wider food system indicators.