Mercado: Policy myopia

Saturday, December 10, 2011

IN which city did scientists track, for over 28 years, the birth, growth, schooling, jobs, illnesses, marriages of 3,080 kids, to help craft policy? Cebu City officials haven’t the faintest idea.

But University of San Carlos’s “Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey” (LHNS) recast policy and programs from Russia, Egypt to Guatemala, says the Economist of London.

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LHNS traced the lives of these children, born 1983, in 33 Cebu barangays. Today, most are working parents. Some quit school. One works in Iceland. They make rare inter-generation analysis possible.

Credit priest-de­mo­­­­­grapher Wilhelm Flieger, SVD. He crafted and oversaw LHNS until his death in 1999. Today, USC’s Office of Population Studies collaborates with scientists worldwide who continue to tease out data.

Northwestern University of Illinois professors Chris Kuzawa and Thom McDade will lecture Wednesday at USC on Cebu data findings. McDade, for instance, analyzes “high-sensitivity C-reactive protein in Cebu kids and it's linkage to heart ailments.”

USC research shaped World Bank’s first health financing strategy, University of North Carolina Barry Popkin writes. It shaped Unicef policy on breast-milk substitutes and Asian Development Bank’s programs on early child development.

A Harvard University team used Cebu’s vaccination data to anchor the $13-billion Global Alliance for Immunization program. This vaccinates children, in 75 of the world’s poorest countries, against childhood diseases.

On the home front, USC’s Tita Lorna Perez and Marilyn Cinco found that diarrhea and respiratory illnesses during infancy lowered scores in math and English performance in the first two years in school.

Kids stunted by malnutrition at age 2 often ended up with a lower number of years of schooling, USC’s Isabelita Bas documented. It whittled down “likelihood of completing high school and college for females.”

Paulita Duazo and Perla Hamoy analyzed 1,888 LHNS adults entering the labor force. “Those who had high height-for-age scores, as kids, tended to have higher labor productivity. What happens early in life has an effect on later life.”

LHNS offered a crucial policy window of opportunity for “investing in early child health programs.” Mayor Tomas Osmeña's three-term administration funneled resources instead for political projects, e.g. handguns, motorcycles for barangay partisans, etc. The Commission on Audit flayed misuse of the 20 percent Local Development Fund.

“Parochial Cebu officials coasted along, unaware of this valuable asset under their noses over the years," Sun.Star noted in October 2005. Prophets continue to be ignored in their own countries.

Osmeña’s one-man choices for Cebu Charter Day awards ignored LHNS or the late Father Flieger. In the 66th Charter Day Awards, on Feb. 24, 2005, then mayor Osmeña wedged his controversial close-in security guard among 15 other awardees.

SP02 Adonis Dumpit then was necklaced with three murder charges before the Ombudsman. He deserved the honor, a resolution from the rubber-stamp city council insisted.

He got a P50,000 cash prize in taxpayers money. “Few days later, Dumpit shot more than 10 times another robbery suspect in barangay Tejero." wrote Manila Bulletin’s Mars W. Mosqueda Jr. Dumpit’s in the clink today.

“What fools these mortals be,” says Shakepeare’s Puck.

(juanlmercado@gmail.com)