Nutrition, Health, and Child Development: Research Advances and Policy Recommendations

Abstract

This book includes comprehensive reviews of most of the topics dealt with at a workshop which examined the role of various nutritional and other health problems on child development and which provides overviews of results of early childhood supplementation and stimulation programmes. The 18 chapters emphasize the importance of approaching child development in an integrated way that considers how its building blocks-health, nutrition and psychosocial stimulation interact with one another. The chapters are entitled: Malnutrition, learning and behaviour: recent advances; The role of the environment in human nutritional research; Activity levels and maternal-child behaviour in undernutrition: studies in Jamaica; Nutrition and care in the preterm and neonatal periods and later development: human milk is best for optimal mental development; Early childhood supplementation and cognitive development, during and after intervention; Health and nutritional determinants of school failure; Mild malnutrition and the cognitive development of Kenyan schoolchildren; School feeding studies in Jamaica; Evaluation of a school breakfast programme in Peru; Geohelminth infections and mental development in Jamaica; Mental and behavioural effect of parasitic infection; Explanatory mechanisms for poorer development in iron-deficient anaemic infants; Iron deficiency and cognition among school-age children; Early childhood stimulation programmes in Jamaica; Policy implications of early childhood stimulation programmes in Jamaica; Policy implications of the effects of health and nutrition on child development; and Iodine deficiency and mental development in children. It contains 1 appendix which summarises the workshop's main findings.