Should a single growth standard be used to judge the nutritional status of children under age 5 y globally? Debate consensus

Abstract

The participants in this debate agreed that: 1) target-based advocacy is required for ensuring countries’ engagement and political commitments toward reducing child malnutrition, and the tools used for monitoring progress should be accurate and pose no risk of harmful consequences; and 2) physical growth is not the only dimension of nutritional status to be monitored in clinical and public health practice; anthropometry is thus only one of the diagnostic indicators of nutritional status. Key disagreements included methodological approaches for developing a single growth standard to evaluate nutritional status globally; the relative utility of universal and contextual growth standards for clinical practice and public health; the balance of benefits, harms, and acceptability among stakeholders; and their use as a screening or a definitive tool in individual and public health nutrition. Noteworthy agreements for research priorities included comparison of benefits and harms of using universal compared with contextual growth standards/references and different stakeholders’ perception of expectations from and utility of growth standards.