BACKGROUND Despite the recent international focus on maternal and child nutrition, little attention is paid to nutrition capacity development. Although infant feeding counselling by health workers increases caregivers' knowledge, and improves breastfeeding, complementary feeding, and children's linear growth, most of the counselling in sub-Saharan Africa is primarily conducted by nurses or volu...

BACKGROUND Child malnutrition remains widespread in many developing countries. Malnutrition during infancy may substantially increase vulnerability to infection and disease, and the risk of premature death. Malnutrition in children may also lead to permanent effects and to their having diminished health capital later in life as adults. These negative consequences of child malnutrition entail th...

The period from conception to 24 months of age is a crucial window for nutrition interventions. Personalized maternal counseling may improve childbirth outcomes, growth, and health. We assessed the effectiveness of facility-based personalized maternal nutrition counseling (from pregnancy to 18 months after birth) in improving child growth and health in rural Burkina Faso. We conducted a paired ...

This paper investigates the role of family composition and child cognitive ability in explaining how resource-constrained households make nutritional investment decisions in their children. When parents make investment decisions, they have private information about their children’s abilities and health that is typically not available to researchers. In this paper, I use a unique panel household...

OBJECTIVE Maternal nutrition knowledge has frequently been identified as an important target for nutrition promotion interventions. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether maternal nutrition knowledge is more strongly associated with the mother's own diet or that of her child. DESIGN Cross-sectional multivariate linear regression with interactions analyses of survey data. SE...