Among the other offices present are the Commission on Population, Philippine National AIDS Council, and the Public Private Partnership for Health Program under the Health Facilities Development Bureau. NNC Deputy Executive Director Dr. Azucena Dayanghirang and Executive Assistant Paul John Garcia accompanied ASec/ED Flores in the said meeting.

In her presentation, ASec/ED Flores emphasized that the organizational structure of the NNC is replicated at the various administrative levels down to the barangay through local nutrition committees. Its mandates have expanded from being the country’s policy-making, planning, and coordinating body on nutrition to many other mandates resulting from legal as well as administrative issuances. These issuances include PD 1569 (BNS Program), RA 8976 (Mandatory Food Fortification Law), RA 8172 (ASIN Law), and others.

For the past four years, NNC provided more than 400,000 stakeholders with various types of assistance such as travelling allowance, medical assistance, technical assistance, trainings, and conferences.

Undersecretary Valle, on the one hand, recognized NNC’s efforts along promotion of good nutrition in multi-media platforms. He particularly lauded the 45 Nutriskwela Community Radio Stations NNC has established. He welcomed the open invitation from ASec/ED Flores for DOH through its Health Promotion and Communications Service to push forward health-related information to far-flung areas reached by Nutriskwela.

The cluster head also vowed to consider a number of NNC’s recommendations to enhance collaboration with DOH. These include harmonizing nutrition program coordination between the NNC and the DOH and fulfilling actions on DOH’s roles and commitments to various programs such as the Integrated Management of Acute Malnutrition, overweight and obesity prevention and management program, PhilHealth coverage of BNSs, milk code violations, among others.