Nearly one out of every two children under 5 years of age in Guatemala is stunted. In the Western Highlands, the situation is far worse, with 7 out of every 10 children stunted. Stunting causes children to be shorter than healthy children of the same age. Stunting is a result of chronic malnutrition caused by inadequate quantity and variety of nutrient-rich foods and/or by repeated illnesses, and can lead to adverse health and physical and cognitive development. Stunting in young children increases the risk of: mortality from infections, impaired cognitive ability, late school enrollment, poor school performance, dropping out of school, lower future adult labor productivity, and chronic diseases in adulthood. Preventing stunting through key interventions during the critical 1,000 days from pregnancy through the first 2 years of life is important because it can become increasingly difficult to reverse stunting’s negative consequences after this period.

DURATION: 5 year integrated nutrition Feed the Future program, funded by USAID (2011-2016), working through multi-sector interventions 

Agriculture and livelihoods, nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programming, policy, training for frontliners, and advanced degree programs 

PARTNERS: 

• Led by Save The Children 
• Partners include Land o’Lakes, Tufts University, JHPIEGO, The Manoff Group, Valid International, and local NGOs through sub-grants 

 LOCATION: 116 woredas (zones) in the Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, Tigray, amd Somali regions of Ethiopia 

TARGETED BENEFICARIES: 

• 3.1 million under five children 
• half a million pregnant and lactating women 
• 3.2 million women of reproductive age 

In many developing countries, food insecurity combined with a high incidence of infections continues to affect detrimentally the nutrition and health status of poor households. Wasting and stunting are important indicators of undernutrition. Wasting reflects acute food shortages and health problems, and stunting reveals the longer-term presence of nutrition problems. The signs and symptoms of specific micronutrient deficiencies are much less commonly known or recognized by local people and therefore not acted upon as frequently. However, specific micronutrient deficiencies frequently go hand-in-hand with general undernutrition.

An important first step in strengthening gender equity and nutrition outcomes involves having reliable methods of measurement of current conditions (Ballard et al. 2011). Measurement tools and indicators have been developed and validated for measuring nutrition outcomes (FANTA 2008; FAO and FHI 360 2016) and gender equity (Malapit et al. 2014; Alkire et al. 2013) at international level. Measurement helps to hold implementers accountable for the actions they take towards improving the status of gender equity and/or nutrition outcomes in their target areas.

Malnutrition continues to be a major development challenge in the South Asia Region. Given its size, India hosts the majority of the malnourished. Around 300 million people in India do not have access to a food supply that sufficiently meets their basic energy needs (World Bank 2012. Nutrition at A Glance: India. Washington, DC: World Bank Group). Despite recent economic growth, poverty remains high, and malnutrition is now manifest in all its forms with overweight and obesity increasing alongside persistent undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. The progress made between 1970 and 2010 in reducing malnutrition was largely due to improving access to safe water, female education, and female empowerment, the latter 2 especially key in South Asia. The factor that made the least progress between 1995 and 2010 is increasing quantity and quality of food, clearly a responsibility of agriculture (L. Smith and L. Haddad 2014, “Reducing Child Undernutrition: Past Drivers and Priorities for the Post-MDG Era.” IDS Working Paper 441).