ABSTRACT DIGEST ON MATERNAL AND CHILD NUTRITION RESEARCH – ISSUE 17

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This issue of the Abstract Digest features several papers of interest to nutrition in India, including a set of papers on determinants of nutritional outcomes and trends, a set of papers on narrative and empirical analyses of change in nutrition and a summary of findings on lipid-based nutrient supplements. It also features IFPRI’s 2017 Global Food Policy Report which looks at the impact of rapid urban growth on food security and nutrition, the 2016 India Spotlight Index from the Access to Nutrition Index, that evaluates the performance of the largest national food and beverage manufacturers’ policies, practices and disclosure related to nutrition in India, and a new UNICEF (2017) report on the implications of the 2030 Agenda for children and the data required to monitor the situation of children within the SDG framework. Here are some more highlights:

• Adu-Afarwuah and colleagues (2017) find that small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements (SQ-LNS) may help reduce inadequate gestational weight gain and promote fetal and child growth and development in low-income settings.
• Results from a decomposition analysis by Chaurasia (2017) suggest that the level, depth and severity of the faltering of the growth of the body mass in Indian children are primarily due to the level, depth and severity of the faltering of the ponderal growth.
• Nisbett’s (2017) narrative policy analysis of the political economy shaping policy on child undernutrition in India, helps elucidate a clearer sense of the underlying positions within this important area of development discourse.
• Preliminary findings from a study on seasonal variation in birth weights, by Madan et. al (2017), suggest that seasonal differences in newborn size vary according to season of exposure during periods of expected maximum fetal growth velocity in weight and length.
• Alderman and Headey (2017) undertake a novel econometric analysis of 376,992 preschool children from 56 developing countries, to the examine the impact of parental education on child nutrition.
• Coates et. al (2017) highlight the barriers to collection and use of individual-level dietary data in low-income countries (LICs), and introduces readers to the INDDEX project which is developing a dietary assessment platform for LICs, called INDDEX24, consisting of a mobile application integrated with a web database application, which is expected to facilitate seamless data collection and processing.
• Sinha and colleagues (2017) use cross sectional data from the India National Family Health Survey Round-3 (NFHS-3) to examine the immediate and underlying effect of gender inequality on child nutritional status.
• A new report by Shankar et. al (2017) summarizes discussions on trends in malnutrition in India, its evolution in the context of economic growth, intrahousehold aspects, infant and young child feeding practices, women's status, maternal nutrition, and nutrition policymaking.
• Kohli and colleagues (2017) find overarching policy support, financing at the national and state level, leadership across sectors, capacity and stability of tenure of bureaucrats, and state innovations in service delivery interventions, to be factors driving the scale up of health and nutrition interventions in Odisha.
• A district-wise analysis of immediate and underlying causes of stunting in Bihar, by Sethi et. al (2017), reveals that prevalence of child stunting in Bihar is as high as 48% and that only 15 of Bihar’s 38 districts are on course to reach the global target of 40% reduction in child stunting by 2025, with some districts likely to take over 25 years to reach the target.
• Deptford et. al (2017) introduce a new software called The Cost of the Diet, that calculates the lowest cost of meeting recommended intakes of energy and nutrients from local foods.
• A review of experience-based household food insecurity (HFI) scales in India, by Sethi and colleagues (2017), reveals that evidence-based policy dialogue is needed in India for contextualizing and harmonizing the experience-based HFI scales across multiple surveys to aid comparability over time, and support policy decision making.
• Gillespie and van den Bold (2017) review recent qualitative evidence to examine the role of agriculture in improving nutrition, and the impact of globalization, trade liberalization, and urbanization on food systems.