Should a single growth standard be used to judge the nutritional status of children under age 5 y globally? Debate consensus.

The participants in this debate agreed that: 1) target-based advocacy is required for ensuring countries' engagement and political commitments toward reducing child malnutrition, and the tools used for monitoring progress should be accurate and pose no risk of harmful consequences; and 2) physical growth is not the only dimension of nutritional status to be monitored in clinical and public health practice; anthropometry is thus only one of the diagnostic indicators of nutritional status. Key disagreements included methodological approaches for developing a single growth standard to evaluate nutritional status globally; the relative utility of universal and contextual growth standards for clinical practice and public health; the balance of benefits, harms, and acceptability among stakeholders; and their use as a screening or a definitive tool in individual and public health nutrition. Noteworthy agreements for research priorities included comparison of benefits and harms of using universal compared with contextual growth standards/references and different stakeholders' perception of expectations from and utility of growth standards.

Should a single growth standard be used to judge the nutritional status of children under age 5 years globally? No.

Universal growth standards for under-five children, given the worldwide variation in healthy growth and several determinants of anthropometry, are imprecise measures of nutritional status, particularly when used cross-sectionally. In constructing the global-use WHO growth standard, linear growth differences between contributing sites and pooled mean were >0.2 SD in 37% of observations.

Should a single growth standard be used to judge the nutritional status of children under age 5 years globally: Yes.

Childhood nutritional status serves as a lens through which nations and communities identify missed opportunities to improve health and wellbeing across the life cycle, as well as economic development and other related sectors. Countries have committed to the global nutrition targets endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 2012, which were included in the Sustainable Development Goals framework under the target to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030. The child malnutrition indicators for tracking countries' progress toward the agreed-upon targets are based on standard definitions of nutritional status against the widely adopted and used World Health Organization (WHO) Child Growth Standards.

Correction: Leppäniemi et al. Nutrition Profile for Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region with Different Income Levels: An Analytical Review. 2023, , 236.

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National, regional, and global estimates of low birthweight in 2020, with trends from 2000: a systematic analysis.

Background: Low birthweight (LBW; <2500 g) is an important predictor of health outcomes throughout the life course. We aimed to update country, regional, and global estimates of LBW prevalence for 2020, with trends from 2000, to assess progress towards global targets to reduce LBW by 30% by 2030.

Methods: For this systematic analysis, we searched population-based, nationally representative data on LBW from Jan 1, 2000, to Dec 31, 2020.

Study protocol for UNICEF and WHO estimates of global, regional, and national low birthweight prevalence for 2000 to 2020.

Background Reducing low birthweight (LBW, weight at birth less than 2,500g) prevalence by at least 30% between 2012 and 2025 is a target endorsed by the World Health Assembly that can contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) by 2030. The 2019 LBW estimates indicated a global prevalence of 14.6% (20.

Small babies, big risks: global estimates of prevalence and mortality for vulnerable newborns to accelerate change and improve counting.

Small newborns are vulnerable to mortality and lifelong loss of human capital. Measures of vulnerability previously focused on liveborn low-birthweight (LBW) babies, yet LBW reduction targets are off-track. There are two pathways to LBW, preterm birth and fetal growth restriction (FGR), with the FGR pathway resulting in the baby being small for gestational age (SGA).

Nutrition Profile for Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region with Different Income Levels: An Analytical Review.

The World Health Organization's (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) is suffering from a double burden of malnutrition in which undernutrition coexists with rising rates of overweight and obesity. Although the countries of the EMR vary greatly in terms of income level, living conditions and health challenges, the nutrition status is often discussed only by using either regional or country-specific estimates. This analytical review studies the nutrition situation of the EMR during the past 20 years by dividing the region into four groups based on their income level-the low-income group (Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen), the lower-middle-income group (Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, and Tunisia), the upper-middle-income group (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya) and the high-income group (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates)-and by comparing and describing the estimates of the most important nutrition indicators, including stunting, wasting, overweight, obesity, anaemia, and early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding.

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Recognition of the importance of nutrition during middle childhood (age 5-9 years) and adolescence (age 10-19 years) is increasing, particularly in the context of global food insecurity and rising overweight and obesity rates. Until now, policy makers have been slow to respond to rapidly changing patterns of malnutrition across these age groups. One barrier has been a scarcity of consistent and regular nutrition surveillance systems for these age groups.

National, regional, and global estimates of anaemia by severity in women and children for 2000-19: a pooled analysis of population-representative data.

Background: Anaemia causes health and economic harms. The prevalence of anaemia in women aged 15-49 years, by pregnancy status, is indicator 2.2.

Estimating Childhood Stunting and Overweight Trends in the European Region from Sparse Longitudinal Data.

Background: Monitoring countries' progress toward the achievement of their nutrition targets is an important task, but data sparsity makes monitoring trends challenging. Childhood stunting and overweight data in the European region over the last 30 y have had low coverage and frequency, with most data only covering a portion of the complete age interval of 0-59 mo.

Objectives: We implemented a statistical method to extract useful information on child malnutrition trends from sparse longitudinal data for these indicators.

Data gaps towards health development goals, 47 low- and middle-income countries.

Objective: To assess the availability and gaps in data for measuring progress towards health-related sustainable development goals and other targets in selected low- and middle-income countries.

Methods: We used 14 international population surveys to evaluate the health data systems in the 47 least developed countries over the years 2015-2020. We reviewed the survey instruments to determine whether they contained tools that could be used to measure 46 health-related indicators defined by the World Health Organization.

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Over 20 million children under 5 years old in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region have stunted growth, as a result of chronic malnutrition, with damaging long-term consequences for individuals and societies. This review extracted and analyzed data from the UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank malnutrition estimates to present an overall picture of childhood stunting in the region. The number of children under 5 in the region who are affected by stunting has dropped from 24.

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In many global health analyses, it is of interest to examine countries' progress using indicators of socio-economic conditions based on national surveys from varying sources. This results in longitudinal data where heteroscedastic summary measures, rather than individual level data, are available. Administration of national surveys can be sporadic, resulting in sparse data measurements for some countries.

Prevalence thresholds for wasting, overweight and stunting in children under 5 years.

Objective: Prevalence ranges to classify levels of wasting and stunting have been used since the 1990s for global monitoring of malnutrition. Recent developments prompted a re-examination of existing ranges and development of new ones for childhood overweight. The present paper reports from the WHO-UNICEF Technical Expert Advisory Group on Nutrition Monitoring.

Successive 1-Month Weight Increments in Infancy Can Be Used to Screen for Faltering Linear Growth.

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Objective: This study aimed to determine an approach to predicting long-term stunting from consecutive 1-mo weight increments in the first year of life.

Methods: By using the reference sample of the WHO velocity standards, the analysis explored patterns of consecutive monthly weight increments among healthy infants.

The Global Nutrition Report 2014: actions and accountability to accelerate the world's progress on nutrition.

In 2013, the Nutrition for Growth Summit called for a Global Nutrition Report (GNR) to strengthen accountability in nutrition so that progress in reducing malnutrition could be accelerated. This article summarizes the results of the first GNR. By focusing on undernutrition and overweight, the GNR puts malnutrition in a new light.

Parental height and child growth from birth to 2 years in the WHO Multicentre Growth Reference Study.

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The World Health Organization's global target for reducing childhood stunting by 2025: rationale and proposed actions.

In 2012, the World Health Organization adopted a resolution on maternal, infant and young child nutrition that included a global target to reduce by 40% the number of stunted under-five children by 2025. The target was based on analyses of time series data from 148 countries and national success stories in tackling undernutrition. The global target translates to a 3.

Complementary feeding and attained linear growth among 6-23-month-old children.

Objective: To examine the association between complementary feeding indicators and attained linear growth at 6-23 months.

Design: Secondary analysis of Phase V Demographic and Health Surveys data (2003-2008). Country-specific ANOVA models were used to estimate effects of three complementary feeding indicators (minimum meal frequency, minimum dietary diversity and minimum adequate diet) on length-for-age, adjusted for covariates and interactions of interest.

Worldwide implementation of the WHO Child Growth Standards.

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Design: A questionnaire on the adoption of the WHO standards was sent to health authorities. The questions concerned anthropometric indicators adopted, newly introduced indicators, age range, use of sex-specific charts, previously used references, classification system, activities undertaken to roll out the standards and reasons for non-adoption.

Undernutrition, poor feeding practices, and low coverage of key nutrition interventions.

Objective: To estimate the global burden of malnutrition and highlight data on child feeding practices and coverage of key nutrition interventions.

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