Promoting Healthy Growth & preventing Childhood Stunting, a project coordinates by WHO

Kolkata: Promoting Healthy Growth and preventing Childhood Stunting is 

a project coordinated by the WHO Department of Nutrition and funded by the Bill and 

Melinda Gates Foundation.

Its aims are to develop tools and a framework to support countries in setting and 

implementing stunting reduction agendas; help shift focus from underweight to stunting 

as the indicator for tracking undernutrition; highlight the association between 

undernutrition in early life and later risk of overweight/obesity, associated with 

non-communicable diseases  and contribute to the achievement of the 2012 World 

Health Assembly stunting reduction target .

Recognition that nutrition-sensitive interventions also are critical for stunting prevention 

has broadened the scope of candidate actions for stunting reduction. Therefore, in addition 

to improved complementary feeding, interventions to strengthen food systems, promote 

healthy diets, improve maternal health, water supplies, sanitation and hygiene are among 

the multi-faceted actions being undertaken to address stunting, a WHO report said.

 Analysis of data on global trends and determinants of growth indicators Collaborating 

with global and country-level partners to set and implement national stunting reduction 

agendas Supporting countries to implement the WHO Child Growth Standards while 

promoting best practices for growth assessment and counselling on infant and young 

child feeding.

Childhood Stunting: Context, Causes and Consequences is a conceptual framework 

that summarizes three levels of factors associated with stunting. It is a direct product of 

the Healthy Growth Project.

It builds on the UNICEF conceptual framework on causes of malnutrition. Stunted 

growth and development are central to this framework. They share common causes and 

the period from conception to age 24 months is highly sensitive for both. Strategies that 

promote and protect healthy growth in this period benefit children's physical, mental, 

socio-emotional, and intellectual growth and development.

Stunting in childhood has short-term and long-term consequences that affect health 

and human capital development. In addition to poor physical growth, stunting affects 

childhood risk of infection and mortality, cognitive and motor development, learning 

capacity and school performance. Later it affects productivity, wages, and reproductive 

health. Stunting followed by excessive weight gain in later childhood leads to increased 

risk of nutrition-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

Among the immediate causes of stunting, complementary feeding is highlighted 

together with the importance of breastfeeding.(UNI)