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Wasting and Stunting: Overcoming the divide

Since the 1970s, those working in nutrition have categorised undernutrition in two major ways, children are either wasted or stunted.

There has very rarely been consideration for the relationship between these two types of undernutrition in children with limited evidence to describe the associations between wasting and stunting or the overlaps in how a child experiences them. Little has previously been known on:  

Wasting and Stunting Technical Interest Group (TIG)

The WaSt Technical Interest Group (TIG) was formed to examine this relationship. The group, coordinated by ENN is made up of 42 experts in child growth, nutrition, epidemiology. 

ENN’s main role since the group's formation has been to harness the skills and enthusiasm of the TIG around the question ‘what is the relationship between wasting and stunting’ and facilitate a number of influential project workstreams to fill gaps in our understanding. The backbone of the expert group is the maintenance of a creative, transparent forum to scrutinise and explore evidence and practice, allowing it to serve the nutrition and wider humanitarian and development sectors as a hub for evidence and expert opinion which is free from organisational agendas.

WaSt TIG Membership and Governance

What we now know as a result of the WaSt Project and the WaSt TIG

Read our 2023-2025 workplan workplan.

For more information please contact Tanya Khara or Natalie Sessions.

WaSt TIG the work so far

Main areas of work

Evidence Generation

Programme and Policy 

Research Influencing

Resources on Wasting and Stunting

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WaSt TIG - the work so far

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FEX: The Wasting-Stunting Technical Interest Group: A summary of the work to date

View this article as a pdf Lisez cet article en français ici This article outlines the work of the Wasting-Stunting Technical Interest Group since its inception in...

FEX: The Wasting-Stunting Technical Interest Group: Summarising the work to date

This is a summary of a Field Exchange field article that was included in issue 67. The original article was authored by Natalie Sessions and Tanya Khara. Natalie Sessions is a...

Blog post: Wasting and Stunting-making progress on understanding the links

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FEX: Wasting and Stunting Technical Interest Group (WaSt TIG) meeting

On the 15th of January 2018 the Wasting and Stunting (WaSt) Technical Interest Group (TIG) held their third face-to-face meeting at Trinity College, Oxford. This group of 30...

FEX: WaSt Special Section Editorial

View this article as a pdf Dear readers, Our aim with this special section of Field Exchange (FEX) is to convey to you the scope of work that the Wasting and Stunting...

Wasting and Stunting: Evidence Generation

Within the WaSt TIG, we continue to generate evidence to increase the understanding of the relationship between wasting and stunting and what this tells us about their...

Wasting and Stunting-making progress on understanding the links

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FEX: A reflection on the 2021 Lancet Maternal & Child Nutrition Series through a WaSt lens

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Resource: Bringing new evidence on undernutrition and mortality risk into practice- Protocol for a prospective cohort study

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FEX: Making connections: Joint meeting of WaSt Technical Interest Group and MAMI Special Interest Group

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FEX: Response to malnutrition treatment in low weight-for-age children: secondary analyses of ComPAS trial data

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FEX: Child wasting and stunting: Time to overcome the separation

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FEX: Summary of wasting and stunting project meeting

In May, the Technical Interest Group (TIG) of the ENN-facilitated Wasting and Stunting (WaSt) project1 held its bi-annual meeting, made possible through the generous support of...

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View this article as a pdf This article was written by Susan Thurstans, PhD candidate at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and consultant to ENN on the...

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LD (). Wasting and Stunting: Overcoming the divide. www.ennonline.net/ourwork/reviews/wastingstunting

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