Peer-reviewed article
Advancing child nutrition science in the scaling up nutrition era: a systematic scoping review of stunting research in Guatemala
Ana Cordon, Gabriela Asturias, Thomas De Vries, Peter Rohloff ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This is a systematic scoping review of 104 articles on child stunting in Guatemala, published between 2000 and 2018. It compares research published before and after the national stunting policy of 2012. The number of articles per year rose, and more studies generated new data on rural indigenous Maya populations. Few studies evaluated implementation or tested new interventions, and none tested nutrition-sensitive interventions. The authors conclude that more research is needed on multilevel interventions, nutrition-sensitive interventions and implementation science.
Key points
- 1934 articles were found through database searches and 104 were included after full-text review.
- Published articles on stunting rose from a mean of 3.2 per year before 2012 to 9.4 per year after.
- Studies generating new data on rural indigenous Maya populations rose from 34% to 61% (p=0.01).
- The share of studies evaluating implementation or testing new interventions was low and did not change significantly (34% vs 18%, p=0.07).
- Of 17 intervention studies, only 4 tested multilevel interventions, and none incorporated nutrition-sensitive interventions.
Limitations
The abstract describes the research landscape and does not assess how well any intervention works or the quality of the included studies. The review covers only English and Spanish articles from three databases, from 2000 to 2018.
Abstract
IntroductionEver since the 1960s, Guatemala has been a principle site for global academic research on child growth and nutrition. Nevertheless, Guatemala still has one of the highest rates of child stunting in the world. Since 2012, Guatemala has had a comprehensive national policy on stunting, calling for a renewed investment in innovative, multilevel nutrition interventions and implementation science. Our objective was to perform a systematic search and scoping review of the literature on stunting in Guatemala to identify gaps in research and opportunities for responding to this unique policy opportunity.MethodsWe conducted a systematic search and scoping review on stunting in Guatemala, searching the PubMed, Web of Science and PsycINFO databases. Eligible articles were of any design or format, published in English and Spanish from 2000 to 2018. Articles were thematically grouped by those published before (2000–2011) and after (2012–2018) the new national policy initiatives.ResultsWe identified a total of 1934 articles through database searches. After full-text review, 104 were included in the synthesis. The volume of published articles on stunting increased from a mean of 3.2 to 9.4 articles/year before and after 2012. There was a shift toward articles generating new data on priority populations, including rural indigenous Maya populations (34% vs 61%, χ2 test, p=0.01). However, the proportion of studies conducting implementation evaluations or testing new interventions was low and did not change significantly (34% vs 18%, χ2 test, p=0.07). Among 17 identified intervention studies, only 4 tested multilevel interventions, and there were no published interventions incorporating nutrition-sensitive interventions.ConclusionsA systematic search and scoping review of the literature on child stunting in Guatemala identified critical opportunities for new research in multilevel interventions, nutrition-sensitive interventions and implementation science.