Acronyms and resource library

English version

Acronyms used across the SNT code library, grouped by domain, followed by a resource library that links to every chapter and page of the site. This is a living reference: please flag missing or incorrect entries via the suggestion form or as a GitHub issue.

Acronyms

SNT and National Planning

Acronym	Expansion
M&E	Monitoring and evaluation
MPR	Malaria programme review
MTR	Mid-term review of the malaria programme
NMP	National malaria programme
NMSP	National malaria strategic plan
SNT	Subnational tailoring of malaria interventions

Organisations

Acronym	Expansion
AHADI	Applied Health Analytics for Delivery and Innovation
UNHCR	United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
USAID	United States Agency for International Development
WHO	World Health Organization
WHO AFRO	WHO Regional Office for Africa
WHO GMP	WHO Global Malaria Programme

Surveys

Acronym	Expansion
DHS	Demographic and Health Survey
MICS	Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey
MIS	Malaria Indicator Survey

The DHS Program distributes data files by recode type:

Code	DHS recode
BR	Birth recode
GE	Geographic recode (cluster locations)
HR	Household recode
IR	Individual (women's) recode
KR	Children's (kids) recode
PR	Person recode (household members)

Routine Surveillance Data

Acronym	Expansion
ANC	Antenatal care
CHW	Community health worker
DHIS2	District Health Information System 2
HF	Health facility
HMIS	Health management information system
IPD	Inpatient department
LMIS	Logistics management information system
OPD	Outpatient department

Spatial Data and GIS

Acronym	Expansion
adm0 / adm1 / adm2 / adm3	National / first / second / third subnational administrative level
CRS	Coordinate reference system
EPSG	European Petroleum Survey Group (geodetic parameter codes)
GADM	Global Administrative Areas (boundary dataset)
GDAL	Geospatial Data Abstraction Library
GIS	Geographic information system
GPS	Global Positioning System
QGIS	Quantum GIS (open-source GIS software)
UTM	Universal Transverse Mercator (projected coordinate system)

Climate and Environmental Data

Acronym	Expansion
AVHRR	Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer
CHIRPS	Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data
CRU	Climatic Research Unit (University of East Anglia)
GPM	Global Precipitation Measurement

Modeled Estimates and Population

Acronym	Expansion
IHME	Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
INLA	Integrated nested Laplace approximation
MAP	Malaria Atlas Project
PfPR	Plasmodium falciparum parasite rate
WorldPop	WorldPop gridded population dataset

Malaria Diagnostics and Case Management

Acronym	Expansion
ACT	Artemisinin-based combination therapy
HRP2 / HRP3	Histidine-rich protein 2 / 3 (P. falciparum antigens detected by RDT)
LDH	Lactate dehydrogenase (Plasmodium antigen detected by RDT)
RDT	Rapid diagnostic test
TPR	Test positivity rate
TSR	Treatment-seeking rate

Malaria Preventive Interventions

Acronym	Expansion
IPTi	Intermittent preventive treatment in infants (now PMC, see below)
IPTp	Intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy
IPTp-SP	IPTp with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine
IRS	Indoor residual spraying
ITN	Insecticide-treated net
LLIN	Long-lasting insecticidal net
PMC	Perennial malaria chemoprevention (formerly IPTi)
RTS,S	RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine (Mosquirix)
R21	R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine
SMC	Seasonal malaria chemoprevention

Other Public Health

Acronym	Expansion
BCG	Bacille Calmette-Guérin (tuberculosis vaccine)
COVID	Coronavirus disease (typically COVID-19)
DTP	Combination vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis
HIV	Human immunodeficiency virus
IDP	Internally displaced person
TB	Tuberculosis
U5MR	Under-five mortality rate
WRA	Women of reproductive age

Statistics and Methods

Acronym	Expansion
CI	Confidence interval
PSU	Primary sampling unit
SE	Standard error

Resource library

External resources referenced across the SNT code library, grouped by topic. These include data portals, technical guidelines, learning materials, and software documentation that underpin the workflows on this site.

WHO Guidance

Resource	Description
WHO SNT manual	Guidance for subnational tailoring of malaria interventions.
WHO guiding principles for prioritization	WHO framework for prioritizing malaria interventions in resource-constrained settings. Informs the prioritization steps of the SNT process.
Practical manual for MPR and MTR	WHO AFRO practical manual for conducting malaria programme reviews (MPR) and mid-term reviews (MTR) of the national malaria strategic plan.
WHO Global Malaria Programme	Technical guidance, policy, and strategy from the WHO programme that coordinates the global malaria response.
WHO Guidelines for malaria	Consolidated WHO recommendations on malaria prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and surveillance.
World Malaria Report	Annual WHO assessment of global progress on malaria control and elimination.
High Burden to High Impact (HBHI)	WHO AFRO and RBM-led approach behind subnational tailoring of malaria interventions.

AHADI Toolkit for SNT

Resource	Description
Roadmap for the SNT Process	Comprehensive planning and timeline tool, resource list, and data checklist for the entire SNT process and related activities such as MPRs/MTRs and surveillance assessment.
Roadmap for Developing a National Malaria Data Repository (NMDR)	Activity-based planning tool for development and strengthening of national malaria data repositories (NMDRs).
SNT Process Terms of Reference	Template terms of reference for the entire SNT process.
SNT Team Terms of Reference	Terms of reference for the establishment of the SNT team.
SNT Analyst Profile	Qualifications and competencies for guiding the engagement of analysts capable of executing SNT analysis.

Malaria Data Portals

Resource	Description
WHO Global Health Observatory	WHO repository of country-level health statistics, including malaria indicators.
Malaria Atlas Project (MAP)	Modeled estimates and surfaces for malaria prevalence, incidence, vector occurrence, and intervention coverage.
IHME Global Burden of Disease	IHME estimates of mortality and morbidity by cause, age, sex, and location.
IHME Global Health Data Exchange	Catalog and download portal for IHME datasets and modeled surfaces.

Household Survey Programs

Resource	Description
The DHS Program	Source for Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and Malaria Indicator Survey (MIS) microdata and reports.
Guide to DHS Statistics	Methodological reference for indicators, weights, and design used in DHS-style surveys.
UNICEF MICS	Source for Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) data and documentation.
DHS spatial data documentation	Reference for DHS cluster GPS data, displacement, and geospatial covariates.

Routine Surveillance and Health Systems

Resource	Description
DHIS2	Open-source health management information system used by most national HMIS platforms.
DHIS2 documentation	Implementation, user, and developer documentation for DHIS2.
DHIS2 Play (demo instance)	Public demo DHIS2 server useful for testing extractions and queries.
WHO Harmonized Health Facility Assessment	Standardized framework for assessing the readiness and quality of health services.

Spatial and Population Data

Resource	Description
GADM	Global database of administrative boundaries used widely in SNT analyses.
Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX)	Open repository of humanitarian and country-level datasets, including admin boundaries.
Natural Earth	Public-domain global map dataset used for base maps and cartography.
OpenStreetMap	Crowdsourced geospatial database for roads, settlements, facilities, and more.
EPSG.io	Searchable reference for coordinate reference systems and EPSG codes.
WorldPop	High-resolution gridded population datasets used throughout the population chapter.
UN World Population Prospects	UN estimates and projections of national populations.
WHO health facility resources	WHO references for master facility list (MFL) development and SARA/SPA assessments.

Climate and Environment

Resource	Description
CHIRPS	Quasi-global rainfall product combining station and satellite data, widely used in malaria modeling.
CRU TS climate data	Long-running monthly climate variables from the Climatic Research Unit (UEA).
NASA Earthdata	Portal for NASA Earth-observation data including precipitation, temperature, and land cover.
USGS LP DAAC (MODIS)	Source for MODIS land-surface temperature, vegetation, and related products.
NASA GPM (IMERG)	Global Precipitation Measurement mission, source of IMERG rainfall data.
SRTM 90 m elevation	Global digital elevation model used for terrain covariates.

R Learning Resources

Resource	Description
R for Data Science (2e)	Free Wickham & Grolemund textbook covering the tidyverse end-to-end.
Advanced R	Hadley Wickham's reference on R internals, functional programming, and metaprogramming.
Tidyverse style guide	Style guide that this library's R code conventions are based on.
Posit cheatsheets	One-page references for dplyr, tidyr, ggplot2, sf, lubridate, and more.
ggplot2 book	Comprehensive reference for the grammar of graphics in R.
Spatial Data Science with R	Pebesma & Bivand's free textbook covering sf, stars, and terra.
Geocomputation with R	Free textbook on geospatial analysis with R.
sf package documentation	Reference for the sf package used throughout the spatial chapters.
terra package documentation	Reference for the terra package used for raster operations.
survey package	Reference for complex-survey estimation used in DHS / MIS analyses.

Python Learning Resources

Resource	Description
Python for Data Analysis (3e)	Wes McKinney's free textbook on pandas and the scientific-Python stack.
pandas documentation	Reference for the pandas DataFrame library used in Python workflows.
GeoPandas documentation	Spatial extension to pandas, the Python analogue of sf.
rasterio documentation	Raster I/O library used in Python climate and modeled-data workflows.
Jupyter	Notebook environment used for Python examples in the library.

Reproducibility and Tooling

Resource	Description
Quarto	Publishing system used to build this website and its bilingual documents.
renv	R environment manager that locks package versions for reproducibility.
Git	Version-control system used to track changes in the library.
SNT Code Library GitHub	Source code, issues, and contribution workflow for this library.
QGIS	Free, open-source GIS used for interactive exploration of spatial data.

Statistical Methods and Modeling

Resource	Description
R-INLA project	Integrated nested Laplace approximation for Bayesian spatial modeling.
Bayesian inference with INLA	Free textbook with worked INLA examples.
Geospatial Health Data (Moraga)	Free textbook on disease-mapping methods with R-INLA.
Forecasting: Principles and Practice (3e)	Free textbook by Hyndman & Athanasopoulos covering time-series methods.