As political commitment is an essential ingredient for elevating food and nutrition security onto policy agendas, commitment metrics have proliferated. Many conflate government commitment to fight hunger with combating undernutrition. This study tests the hypothesis that commitment to hunger reduction is empirically different from commitment to reducing undernutrition through expert surveys in five high-burden countries: Bangladesh, Malawi, Nepal, Tanzania, and Zambia. The findings confirm the hypothesis. The paper concludes that sensitive commitment metrics are needed to guide government and donor policies and programmatic action. Without these metrics being available to guide policy, historically inadequate prioritization of non-food aspects of malnutrition may persist to imperil achieving global nutrition...

The effect of prenatal zinc supplementation on birth weight is controversial as randomised controlled trials (RCTs) report conflicting conclusions. A systematic review which includes meta-analysis was done on 17 RCTs conducted worldwide since 1984 to assess the effect of prenatal zinc supplementation on birth weight. The studies were identified through web-based search. Heterogeneity among studies […]

Vitamin A is an essential micronutrient required for the normal functioning of the vision system, immunity, epithelial integrity, cellular differentiation, growth and development, and possibly reproduction. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines vitamin A deficiency (VAD) as tissue concentrations of vitamin A (VA) low enough to have adverse health consequences, even if there is no […]

Prenatal Iron Supplementation (PIS) has a paramount contribution for reducing maternal mortality. The coverage and compliance in Ethiopia is 17.3 per cent and 0.4 per cent respectively. The aim of this study is to determine the coverage of and adherence to prenatal IFS (Iron Folic acid Supplementation) and to identify factors affecting utilization of the […]

Background: The amount and distribution of rainfall and temperature influences household food availability, thus increasing the risk of child under nutrition. However, few studies examined the local spatial variability and the impact of temperature and rainfall on child under nutrition at a smaller scale (resolution). We conducted this study to evaluate the effect of weather […]

By recognising the multifaceted nature of health, this paper engages in the lively debate on the effects of health in early childhood on educational outcomes in later life stages, bringing new evidence from four low-and middle-income countries. Using three rounds from the rich panel data of the Young Lives study in Ethiopia, India, Peru and […]

Undernutrition among HIV-positive children can be ameliorated if they are given adequate foods in the right frequency and diversity. Food insecurity is known to undermine such efforts, but even in food rich areas, people have undernutrition. As yet no study has examined feeding practices and their associations with nutrition status among as HIV-positive children in […]

The paper studies the link between Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) and short-run nutrition outcomes among children age 5 years and younger. It uses 2006 and 2010 survey data from Northern Ethiopia to estimate parameters of an exogenous switching regression. This allows us to measure the differential impacts of household characteristics on weight-for-height Z-score […]

This paper uses a political economy approach to examine questions around the lack of progress toward nutrition goals in six countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Peru and Zambia. All have medium to strong nutrition governance indicators, but only some are on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal and others have made no progress at […]

Governance is a critical yet understudied component in the nutrition agenda, according to this paper’s authors. The paper uses a political economy approach to examine questions around the progress or lack thereof toward nutrition goals in six countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Peru and Zambia. All have medium to strong nutrition governance indicators, but only […]