Reducing Maternal and Child Undernutrition through Social Protection

Dear Colleagues,

The 2019 Lancet Commission report on obesity, undernutrition and climate change identified undernutrition as the gravest threat to human health and survival. Globally, the estimated number of undernourished people increased from 777 million in 2015 to 821 million in 2017. The majority of these undernourished women and children live in developing countries. Undernutrition is strongly associated with poverty.  Of the world’s 736 million extreme poor in 2015, half of the total lived in only 5 countries, namely India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. All of these countries have recorded very high levels of undernutrition.  There is evidence that, within countries, the undernutrition rates are higher among the poor than the non-poor.

The 2019 Lancet commission report, and the 2008 and 2013 Lancet series on maternal and child nutrition, all strongly suggested using nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions to address the underlying determinants of poor nutrition. Social protection addresses structural factors, such as poverty and social vulnerability There is increasing recognition that social protection is an important strategy to accelerate progress in improving maternal and child nutrition.

For this Special Issue, “Reducing Maternal and Child Undernutrition through Social Protection”, in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, we invite submissions that examine the use of social protection strategy/intervention in combating maternal and child undernutrition.

Examples of research questions that submitted papers could address include (but are not limited to):

• What are the relative impacts and cost-effectiveness of different social protection programs in improving maternal and child undernutrition?
• How cost-effective are CCT programs compared with other demand side interventions to improve maternal and child nutrition?
• What is the role of social protection in reducing inequalities in maternal and child nutrition outcome?
• What are the long-term effects of social protection programs on nutrition behaviour change, and how sustainable have they been?
• What are the pathways through which social protection programs affect maternal and child undernutrition, and what are the implications for program design?
• What is the evidence of the of the effectiveness of cash transfers in improving undernutrition in women and children?
• What role social protection can play in the fight against food insecurity and malnutrition?
• How do nutrition-sensitive social protection programs affect intergenerational and gender relationships at the community and household level?

Dr. Tanvir M. Huda
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• maternal and child undernutrition
• social protection
• cash transfer
• nutrition sensitive intervention