Optimizing food assistance programs: Improving child growth in Burundi

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USAID workers set up a distribution point for a nutritional supplement in Burundi. To maximize the impact such nutritional interventions can have on a child's linear growth, they should target the entire period from conception to a child's second birthday. Photo by Megan Parker

BY TRACY BROWN AND JEF LEROY

Food-assisted maternal and child health and nutrition (FA-MCHN) programs have long been used to address hunger and hunger-related problems. Traditionally, such programs targeted families with underweight children younger than five. But a landmark IFPRI study in Haiti showed that preventive interventions—those that target all mothers during pregnancy and the first 6 months of lactation as well as children between 6 and 24 months old (the first 1,000 days)—are more effective than traditional recuperative interventions.

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