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Community Health
and Nutrition Research Laboratory (CHN-RL) is a field laboratory for a
longitudinal surveillance on health and nutrition. In earlier The World Bank funded
project is a collaboration research studies between the ministry of Health
and Department of Education and Culture, Indonesia. The Faculty of
Medicine - Gadjah Mada University has been assigned as the main host of
the management operational of this project.
 A major challenge
for health system in Indonesia on the 1990 is to respond to the increasing
demographic and epidemiological diversity that is an outcome of the
differential speed of economic development and fertility declines in
different provinces. This diversity demand a more flexible approach to
formulation of health policy with individual provinces needing to develop or
encountered in their communities.
Provincial health
planner and program managers need a variety of sources of information to
determine the major disease in their communities and effectiveness and cost
of alternative intervention strategies. Valid data are essential for the
health problems and selection of the efficient interventions. The
information sources currently available for formulating provincial health
policy include; census data, inter-census household health and nutrition
data, specific health survey data and routine MOH surveillance data.
Although these
sources of information may assist in identifying the major disease and
nutritional problem in province, they provide only limited information about
change in demographic and health status, change in health risk factors and
the effectiveness of alternative of alternative intervention strategies. In
this setting an appropriately designed longitudinal community health
research laboratory can provide vital information needed for provincial
health and nutritional status, health services and the community response to
these service.
In general CHN-RL
aims to increase community health and nutrition status at the district
level, particularly children and women for the main concerns on child
survival and save motherhood. Data gained from this longitudinal
surveillance provide information on the baseline and the changes of the
demographic, morbidity, nutrition, and health services in the area as main
contribution of the CHN-RL for the health policy makers. In addition to the
surveillance, the CHN-RL comprises two other components; those are training
and applied research components.
The basic element
of a community of health research laboratory include a defined population,
an systematic collection of data in the population through surveys or a
surveillance system, routine descriptive report of the rates for the major
health events monitored and the implementation of cohort studies to identify
health risk factors or to evaluate health interventions. In addition to the
component of surveillance, there are two other main component, there are
training and applied research.
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