Nutrition in Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health: A Global Perspective

These chapters provide a comprehensive overview of global maternal and child nutrition challenges, focusing on malnutrition in its various forms: protein-energy malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and obesity. Despite progress, millions of children under 5 are stunted, underweight, and wasted, particularly in developing countries, significantly contributing to morbidity and mortality. It highlights the interconnected nature of maternal-child nutrition and its long-term impacts on fetal programming, intergenerational cycle of malnutrition, and human capital development. While the basic, immediate, and underlying determinants of malnutrition persist, climate-induced food insecurity and geopolitical instability are influencing the epidemiologic severity. Meanwhile, the nutrition transition is creating obesogenic uterine and food environments, further fueling a global rise of obesity in pregnancy and childhood and complicating the double burden of malnutrition to a syndemic state. The chapters also delve into emerging issues such as the nutrition-fertility and mental health nexuses and the impact of climate vulnerabilities and (re)emerging infections on food systems. Besides the traditional malnutrition interventions (supplementation, food fortification, and dietary diversification), prevention, management, and control strategies should harness multiple and synergistic nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive actions with multisectoral linkages. Promoting optimal nutrition throughout the life course requires partnerships at the micro- (individual), meso- (household, communities, societal), and macro-levels (national, global) to tackle the maternal and child undernutrition and overnutrition burden.