Child undernutrition in South Asia : a multidimensional analysis

Abstract

South Asia has one of the largest populations of undernourished children in the world. Undernutrition continues to pose a major threat to this region’s economic and social growth. The aim of this PhD was threefold: (i) to identify factors and drivers of child undernutrition across South Asia; (ii) to generate evidence that will inform the prioritization of nutrition related programs and policies; and (iii) to identify gaps and opportunities for accelerating national and international nutrition agenda. This study used a multidimensional approach encompassing a systematic review of literature, pooled analysis using data from the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) and mapping of national nutrition policies and programs. First, a systematic review of literature, with a meta-ethnographic analysis was performed to understand the factors and identify priorities for hidden hunger and child undernutrition in South Asia. The meta-ethnographic findings from the systematic review led to the amendment of the UNICEF conceptual framework for child undernutrition. This amended model proposes to mainstream context-specific nutrition behavioural change interventions along with nutrition specific and sensitive interventions that target gender, social and cultural factors, and norms. There is limited literature to understand region-specific factors of child undernutrition, hence making it difficult to generalise findings. Lastly, most of these studies did not study child stunting and wasting for all ages groups of children

Date of Award	2023
Original language	English