Staff from EDC's Health and Human Development Programs (HHD) recently returned from Nigeria, where they worked with that nation's ministries of health and education to implement RAAPP, a method used to assess and strengthen national efforts to promote health through schools.
"The intervention promotes collaboration within a country
by galvanizing a vision around school health," says Scott Pulizzi,
a senior research associate for HHD. "Ministries of health and education,
which ordinarily work separately and have different agendas, come together
through RAAPP to share the responsibility for promoting health and preventing
disease through schools."
Schools may become involved in nutrition programs, disease prevention
strategies, violence prevention, vaccination programs, or addressing environmental
issues such as sanitation and water quality.
"The process not only forges consensus around the vision of a health-promoting school, but identifies innovative solutions to major challenges and concrete ways to implement them," says Phyllis Scattergood, associate center director, Center to Promote Health Through Schools and Communities at HHD, who, with Pulizzi, conducted RAAPP trainings, data collection, and analysis in the Nigerian cities of Lagos, Ibadan, and Abuja from August 26 through Sept. 8, 2001.
RAAPP, which stands for Rapid Assessment and Action Planning Process, is an outgrowth of "rapid assessment" procedures that emerged in the 1970s as investigators searched for efficient ways to plan agricultural improvements or respond to natural disasters. Widely used in Africa, India, and Latin America, rapid assessments are not only faster, less expensive ways to gather data than conducting large-scale surveys, but their customized design and involvement of local officials means the data are more accepted by countries, and the findings are more likely to be implemented and evaluated.
For example, a significant technique in RAAPP is to enlist local field investigators in the design, wording, and conducting of surveys, thus making sure the language and methods are relevant and sensitive to a particular culture's needs.
RAAPP has also proven valuable in eliciting a range of qualitative information and insights that do not generally surface from large-scale quantitative surveys. Most important, rapid assessment is based on the recognition that individuals at national, regional, and local levels provide the most valuable knowledge of and insights into a country's capacity, which is critical to effective planning.
HHD works with and is supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) in implementing RAAPP, which is part of WHO's Mega Country School Health Network. The Mega countries—the world's 11 most populous nations—have formed a global network to strengthen efforts that address the healthy development of young people through schools.
RAAPP was first pilot-tested in Bolivia and Costa Rica in the late 1990s. The first full-scale application was conducted in Indonesia in 1999-2000. The version implemented in Nigeria is a revised and customized form of the one undertaken in Indonesia. HHD's goal is to partner with other countries to customize RAAPP for their own use.
Scattergood, who has worked extensively with the RAAPP in Indonesia, points out that, "the core elements of the process— capacity building, data collection, analysis, and action-planning methods-are transferable to any setting or country, as long as country representatives gain a sense of ownership by customizing the process to their own needs."
As a result of the recent RAAPP training, a core team representing the Nigerian Federal Ministries of Education and Health developed a draft action plan, which was based on 27 interviews, an analysis of surveys,and a focus on each of the five core national capacities RAAPP is designed to assess and strengthen: policy, leadership and management, knowledge base, collaboration, and monitoring and evaluation.
The plan calls for the development of:
A comprehensive
school health policy at the national level, with appropriate legal support,
to guide the management of school health programs;
A national
focal body to coordinate and lead school health initiatives;
Increased
participation opportunities for local representatives; and
Monitoring
and evaluation systems to continuously improve school health programs
in Nigeria.
Nigerian officials from the ministries of health and education are in
the process of implementing the plan, which is being monitored by the
WHO Nigeria office.
Health & Human Development Programs :: 55 Chapel Street, Newton,
MA 02458-1060
phone 800.225.4276 :: fax 617.527.4096 :: email
info@hhd.org
Copyright 2002 Education Development Center