Global

The public discourse around the COVID-19 pandemic has been strikingly quantitative. Worldwide, the mainstream media has regularly informed the public of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths, including projections of worst-case scenarios drawn from esoteric epidemiological models. The prominence and visibility of data, regardless of its completeness or quality, underscored the threat of COVID-19 to policy makers and lay individuals alike. It also prompted governments to swiftly lock down their societies, despite the socioeconomic disruptions and human suffering associated with such lockdowns. The widespread media coverage of COVID-19 data and swift response from governments highlight the potency of real-time data, and contain important lessons for public health policy, which when applied, could raise the profile of other health issues and spur action among key stakeholders.

Many interventions focus on preventing stunting in the first 1,000 days of life.
We take a broader perspective on childhood growth to assess the proportions
of children who suffer persistent stunting, recover, and falter and become
newly stunted between birth and adolescence. We use longitudinal data
collected on 7,128 children in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. Data were
collected in five survey waves between the ages of 1 to 15 years. We use
descriptive and graphical approaches to compare the trajectories of children
first stunted by age 1, first stunted by age 5, and those remained not stunted
until age 5. On average, 29.6% of children were first stunted by age 1, 12.9%
of children were first stunted by the age 5, and 68.7% of children were not
stunted at either age 1 or age 5. A larger percentage of children stunted by
age 1 remained stunted at age 15 (40.7%) compared with those who were first stunted by age 5 (32.3%); 33.7% of children first stunted by age 1 and 31.1%
of children first stunted by age 5 go on to recover, but then falter during
later childhood. 13.1% of children who were not stunted at age 1 or age 5
become newly stunted between the ages of 8 and 15. Our results show that
children both become stunted and recover from stunting into adolescence.
More attention should be paid to interventions to support healthy growth
throughout childhood.