“Action is needed across various sectors to address chronic malnutrition,” Assistant Secretary and Executive Director IV, Azucena Milana-Dayanghirang call to action to the delegates of the 70th Nutritionist-Dietitian Association of the Philippines (NDAP) Annual Convention, held on 19 February 2025 at The Manila Hotel.

With the theme, “Sparkle@70: Collaboration for Excellence,” the National Nutrition Council has been working with various stakeholders and development partners to help ensure nutrition and food security through social assistance and livelihood options, improve childcare practices and to provide access to health and nutrition services. “This is known as the multisectoral convergence programming approach and has been shown to bring rapid improvements in child health and nutrition development, aligned with the Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition (PPAN) 2023-2028,” A/Sec. Milana-Dayanghirang emphasized.

“It is important that we implement the deliverables and appropriate actions at our level to achieve desirable nutrition outcomes,” A/Sec. Milana-Dayanghirang points out, and that “convergence” simply means pooling resources or giving access to resources of the national and local government and other stakeholders for the achievement of the goal of improved nutrition and food security.

She urges partners and nutrition champions, especially the local government units as key actors for nutrition improvement, to explore other possibilities to encourage their respective agencies and offices to engage in a multisectoral approach to achieve nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions. “We believe that malnutrition cannot be solved by just one agency; it has to be a multisectoral approach with the active involvement of all agencies and stakeholders,” A/Sec. Milana-Dayanghirang expressing optimism that a collaborative partnership will enhance the execution of quality programs that are relevant and efficient to address malnutrition.

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