Editorial

We are pleased to share with you Issue 4 of Nutrition Exchange (NEX). In addition to the usual summaries of important nutrition-related publications, this issue features 12 original articles from our readers across the globe. This is a marked increase from the three original articles we published in Issue 3 and is a trend that we hope continues. Our goal is for NEX to become the main nutrition publication written by national actors for national readers. A warm thank you to all the national authors for taking the time to document and share their valuable experiences.

The 12 original articles describe a wealth of experiences with implementing nutrition specific and sensitive programmes across Africa and Asia. They include articles from Tanzania, The Gambia and Somali refugee camps in Kenya on increasing access to diverse foods through innovative approaches such as women’s gardening and savings groups and through cash transfers. Two articles from Pakistan focus on the experiences with putting in place the governance needed to scale up nutrition and address sub-optimal infant and young child feeding practices. There are six articles from Kenya, Ethiopia, Chad and Pakistan which describe different approaches to addressing high levels of acute malnutrition in resource constrained environments and from Somalia, there is a description of a project to increase school attendance, particularly for girls.

Key publications and meetings reviewed in this issue highlight the global recognition of the importance of preventing stunting, the physiological links between wasting and stunting and the policy and prgramme implications as well as the associations between economic growth and child undernutrition.

Two reviews on the links between water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and child growth are also summarised. WASH and nutrition is a growing area of research and programme interest and we hope to feature more experiences on the practical links between WASH and nutrition in our next issue. We also summarise two important reviews on maternal and adolescent nutrition.

This issue does not feature a large amount of information on news and events. This is because the ENN is improving its website so that from July 2014, current news, events, trainings, relevant links and job openings will be an ongoing, continually updated feature. The website will also feature the traditional content of the ENN’s email newsletter and thus the last email newsletter will be issued in June. Please check out the changes at www.ennonline.net and stay current by visiting regularly!

The Arabic and French translation of this issue will be ready by July 2014.

As always, we welcome your feedback on the publication and your ideas for articles for our next issue which will be published in May 2015.

Yours sincerely,
The Nutrition Exchange Team at the ENN (Carmel, Valerie and Chloe)