ABSTRACT DIGEST ON MATERNAL AND CHILD NUTRITION RESEARCH – ISSUE 15

This last issue of the Abstract Digest for 2016 brings to focus the importance of maternal factors including pre- and peri-conceptional nutrition, education and stature, as well as macro-level factors such as sustained economic growth and investments in health, education, and water for the overall well-being of a child. Here are some highlights:

• De-Regil (2016) describes the current global guidelines for preconceptional nutrition for girls and women while highlighting gaps and the need for evidence to move the nutrition agenda. King (2016) provides a comprehensive review of the origins of our current understanding as well as the role of preconception and periconception nutrition and subsequent well-being of the next generation.
• Ramakrishnan and colleagues (2016), in a double-blind randomized controlled trial setting, did not find any influence of preconceptional supplementation of multiple micronutrients or iron folic acid on birth outcomes of Vietnamese women. However, consuming a daily snack made from leafy green vegetables, milk, and fruits during preconception period, was found to have a protective effect against gestational diabetes in a randomized-controlled study conducted in India (Sahariah et al. 2016).
• Garcia and colleagues (2016) in a systematic literature review found that obesity among women is associated with failure to initiate breastfeeding and delayed onset of lactogenesis.
• Devkumar and colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of long-term follow-up studies of the trials that were included in the 2015 Cochrane review of multiple micronutrient supplementation in pregnancy. They found that there is no evidence to suggest that routine multiple micronutrient supplementation improves child survival growth, blood pressure, respiratory or cognitive outcomes better than only iron and folic acid supplementation.
• Sacks and Langlois (2016) comment on the need to invest in improving the quality of interventions during the postnatal period, and bridging the inequity gap while focusing on increasing their coverage.
• Corsi and colleagues (2016) reported that maternal height, BMI, education, and household wealth explain between 60 to 80% of the burden of undernutrition among stunted/underweight children in India, with poor dietary diversity being a major risk factor. Furthermore, maternal health literacy was found to be associated with child nutrition status in resource-poor rural and urban settings in India (Johri et al. 2016).
• A mobile-based nutrition grade calculator improved the diagnostic accuracy of screening for acute malnutrition by frontline workers in the slums of Mumbai (Chanani et al. 2016), by reducing the human error in using the WHO tables.
• In a comprehensive qualitative study conducted in six states in India, Chaturvedi and colleagues (2016), identified maternal time constraints, fragile food security system, child targeted market, availability and consumption of ready-to-eat market foods, poor feeding practices, and inadequate responsiveness of the government systems as the most forceful thematic areas that could contribute to both undernutrition and childhood obesity.
• Mamidi and colleagues (2016) use cross-sectional data from the National Monitoring Bureau to construct secular trends in linear growth and report that the patterns of linear growth over the last three decades in two of the southern states (Kerala and Tamil Nadu) has been similar to that of in the developed countries.
• In the context of India’s dual burden of malnutrition, Thow et al. (2016) found that policy opportunities exist for targeting common foods of interest such as highly processed foods and fruits and vegetables while challenges include policy inertia and competing priorities within the economic sector.
• Soriano and colleagues (2016) used panel data from 27 countries and spanning 22 years to examine the role of economic growth in reducing undernutrition and state that along with a sustained long-term economic growth, investments in health, education, and drinking water are required.
• According to Balrajan and Reich (2016), lack of an effective policy entrepreneur was a major limitation to transforming the potential for reform to an actual reform of the Integrated Child Development Services program reforms in 2012.
• Aguayo et al (2016) call for strengthening national and state policies, hospital and maternity practices to support early initiation of breastfeeding in the light of low rates of breastfeeding initiation (44%) despite the rise in deliveries attended by skilled-birth attendants (81%).
• Leyvraz et al (2016) found that the coverage and utilization of the take-home ration for children under the ICDS program are high in the state of Telangana, and can be further improved by addressing the supply chain problems and intra-household product sharing issues.
• Two studies from the three country Alive& Thrive research Leyvraz et al (2016) found that the coverage and utilization of the take-home ration for children under the ICDS program are high in the state of Telangana, and can be further improved by addressing the supply chain problems and intra-household product sharing issues.
• The Alive & Thrive study results from Bangladesh and Viet Nam demonstrate that intense interpersonal counseling combined with mass media and community mobilization improve breastfeeding practices at-scale (Menon et al. 2016). In Bangladesh, while the intense intervention also improved complementary.