How we started

Since the 1970s, those working in nutrition have categorised undernutrition in two major ways, children are either wasted or stunted. 

There has very rarely been consideration for the relationship between these two types of undernutrition in children with limited evidence to describe the associations between wasting and stunting or the overlaps in how a child experiences them. Little has previously been known on:   

  • Whether one precedes, or predisposes, the other and what that might mean for policies and practice. 
  • The overlapping biochemical and physiological processes that lead to a child becoming wasted and/or stunted, and recovering from the same, and how they might be mediated and /or magnified. 
  • The scale of the problem of concurrent wasting and stunting in children and its implications for mortality risk and for programmes aiming at providing treatment for the most at risk. 

The WaSt TIG was set up to address this gap.

Phase 5: (2023 - 2025)

In 2023, the WaSt TIG entered its 9th year of work with much evidence generated since the original impetus for the creation of the group. In this phase the work continues to be centred around three objectives, but with increased focus on translating and communicating the body of research already built by the group and others:

  1. To continue to generate evidence to increase the understanding of the relationship between wasting and stunting and what this tells us about their aetiology, consequences, treatment and prevention.
  2. To translate the implications of the evidence for policies and programmes to better meet the needs of national and global actors.
  3. To further influence the research agendas of donors, academia and implementation research-focused agencies.
Ethiopian girl in school

To date we have produced a number of key outputs under these objectives:

Phase 4 (2020-2022)

In 2020, the WaSt TIG entered its fourth phase of the project, with work on key workstreams continuing. The work was arranged according to the three objectives articulated in the workplan.

Phases 3 - 1

Find out more about WaSt TIG