Technical Briefing Paper: The relationship between wasting and stunting: policy, programming and research implications (2014)

This paper is a narrative review of the available literature on the relationship between wasting and stunting. It was born out of previous work carried out by the ENN which illustrated the divide at programme, policy and financing level between wasting and stunting. This divide ultimately has profound implications for how children worldwide receive nutrition interventions and services and, may well contribute to the lack of nutritional impact seen in programmes only addressing one part of the undernutrition problem. Gaining a clearer and common understanding of the relationship between wasting and stunting has the potential to help governments and supporting organisations to better justify, design and evaluate programmes to improve childhood nutrition. This paper aims to contribute to that clearer and common understanding.