The past decade has seen unprecedented attention going to undernutrition, and drastically reducing child stunting has become a global development objective. The focus on linear growth retardation and stunting led to successful advocacy for nutrition but also revealed confusion and misunderstanding about the meaning of these terms among researchers, donors, and agencies active in nutrition.
The National Information Platform for Nutrition (NIPN), the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) and IFPRI will host a webinar on November 18, 2020 at 3:30 PM EAT to discuss new perspectives on child stunting. Based on a critical review of the literature, the webinar will challenge current views on the consequences of linear growth retardation and stunting. It will call for fundamentally different ways of using linear growth and stunting as measures of global development.
The webinar will also present a significant and underappreciated additional factor to child growth faltering: Altitude. Analyzing data from nearly 1 million children in 59 low- and middle-income countries, the study will share insights into the association between child growth faltering and residence at high altitude.
Photo Credit: UNICEF Ethiopia/2006/Getachew
