Dr. Azucena M. Dayanghirang is an experienced public health leader. For the past 29 years, she has been a facilitator and a trainer for various health programs particularly on Maternal Child Health and Nutrition. She has served the people of Davao as City Nutrition Action Officer from 1991-1995; Chief of the Technical Services Division and Medical Officer VI of Davao City Health Office from 1996 to 2005; as well as the Provincial Health Officer II and Provincial Nutrition Action Officer of Davao del Sur from 2008 to 2016.
During her stint in the local government, she led the City Nutrition Committee in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of health and nutrition programs. She initiated the “Fresh Milk Supplemental Feeding Program,” which led to the reduction of protein-energy malnutrition among 0-6-year-old children. She also successfully lobbied for the regularization of 32 Nutritionist-Dietitians deployed in the 16 Districts of Davao City in 1996.
In 2016, she was elected as the National President of the Nutrition Action Officers' Association of the Philippines (NAOPA), Inc. Shortly after, she was appointed as Deputy Executive Director of the National Nutrition Council (NNC), an attached agency of the Department of Health, Philippines. In August 2019, Dr. Dayanghirang was appointed as the Executive Director of the NNC. Currently, she is designated as the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Philippines Government Focal Point and most recently, appointed as a member of the Executive Committee of the Global Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement representing Asia. Just recently, she was designated as the Co-Chair of the Inter-Agency Task Force in Zero Hunger (IATF-ZH) and newly designated as the Project Manager of the Philippine Multisectoral Nutrition Project (PMNP).

Dr. Eva A. Goyena is a Senior Science Research Specialist at the Food and Nutrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and Technology who specialises in nutritional assessment, particularly on dietary assessment, maternal health and nutrition, and infant and young child feeding practices research studies. Prior to joining FNRI-DOST, she worked as a Nutrition Officer II in the Nutrition Surveillance Division of the National Nutrition Council-Central Office from 2002 to 2003.
Dr. Goyena completed her PhD at the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) in 2018. She conducted her dissertation research entitled “Effectiveness of the Micronutrient Powder along with Complementary Food Blend in Improving the Nutritional Status of Young Children 6-23 months in Calauan, Laguna”.
Her works involved the conduct of quantitative and qualitative assessment of the drivers and barriers of maternal anemia reduction among WRA; The Philippine Case Study funded by the SickKids, Canada from 2020 to 2021. She worked as a consultant for the State of Fish in Nutrition Systems in the Philippines” project of MRAG-Asia Pacific Brisbane Australia from January to June 2022. She was a co-principal investigator of the DOST-FNRI Rapid Nutrition Assessment Survey (RNAS) during the pandemic from October to November 2020.
Currently, she is involved as a co-project investigator of the Fruit and Vegetables for Sustainable Healthy Diet (FRESH) Initiative: Understanding and Influencing Consumer Behaviour towards Fruit and Vegetable Consumption in the Philippines, in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute-Consortium of International Agricultural Research Center (IFPRI-CGIAR).
Dr. Goyena is the study leader of food consumption survey components of the national nutrition survey. She produced government reports, and frequently published papers in the scientific literature on maternal and child nutrition, including food and nutrient adequacy of different Filipino population groups, and nutrition situation during the pandemic.