Scientific articles
and research
This section brings together key scientific information on stunting. It offers updated studies, analyses and findings that contribute to a deeper understanding of its causes, the influence of the social determinants of health, the impact of stunting in countries, and prevention strategies.
- Year of publication,
Our quantitative analyses showed that poverty reduction, health system strengthening, improved maternal nutrition, increased parental education, reduced fertility, and increased migratory lowlands were strong determinants of stunting reduction.
- Year of publication,
There are large undernutrition disparities among children under 5 years of age and women of reproductive age in all countries except Uruguay and Brazil.
- Year of publication,
Stunting is one of the most important pediatric disorders worldwide, contributing to developmental delay. Effective approaches to stunting require comprehensive, multilevel interventions that address both direct and underlying mediators of child nutrition. The Scaling Up Nutrition framework calls for academic collaborations with policy makers to help scale up stunting interventions.
- Year of publication,
Ethnicity is strongly associated with socioeconomic status in Latin America, can be considered as one of the distal determinants of stunting, as evidenced in the present analyses, and an important contributor to the intergenerational transmission of poor nutrition and poverty.
- Year of publication,
This research article by Lourdes Huiracocha-Tutiven evaluates child development, nutritional status and complementary feeding (CF) practices in children aged 12-23 months in Cuenca, Ecuador. The authors identified a significant prevalence of chronic child undernutrition and overweight/obesity, indicating a double burden of malnutrition. The study underscores that the nutritional and developmental profile of these children represents an ongoing challenge for health programs in Ecuador.
- Year of publication,
Authors: William F. Waters, Carlos Andrés Gallegos, Celia Karp, Chessa Lutter, Christine Stewart and Lora Iannotti. The article describes a study conducted in rural communities in the province of Cotopaxi, Ecuador, with the objective of understanding local perceptions and practices regarding egg consumption. It highlights that, despite the availability and nutritional value of eggs for young children, medical information and community beliefs limited their inclusion in children's diets. The research concludes that an effective dietary intervention can modify caregiver behavior, promoting the early introduction of eggs to improve child nutrition. This study contributed to the Ministry of Public Health of Ecuador modifying its technical guidelines for the introduction of eggs in infant diets, now recommending their initiation at 6 months of age.
- Year of publication,
The research, developed by Wilma Freire et al., addresses how the simultaneous presence of undernutrition and overweight represents a paradox in global public health and is of increasing concern in Ecuador, where chronic undernutrition, overweight and obesity occur in a context of demographic and epidemiological transitions. In Ecuador, there are two overlapping trends: while levels of chronic undernutrition have slowly declined over the past three decades, an increasing proportion of children under 5 years of age and women of reproductive age are overweight and obese.
- Year of publication,
This study aimed to describe nutrition disparities in stunting in low- and middle-income countries and obesity in both low- and middle-income and high-income countries; to discuss disparities in micronutrient malnutrition. Stunting and overweight are not randomly distributed within a given population. In all regions, the prevalence of stunting among children under 5 years of age declines as wealth increases. Multisectoral policies that address the social determinants of health are needed to prevent and reduce inequalities in undernutrition and obesity globally Nutrition-specific interventions alone have failed to improve the statistics in low- and middle-income countries.
- Year of publication,
Equity is a critical component of countries' sustainable development goals. The state must work across sectors and develop strategies for effective intersectoral actions that adequately address the social determinants of equity and reduce the inequalities of Chronic Childhood Undernutrition.
- Year of publication,
Over the last century, adult height has changed substantially and unequally in countries around the world. The height difference between the tallest and shortest populations was ~19 cm for men and ~20 cm for women a century ago.