Measuring Nutrition Dynamics Over Time to Illuminate Critical Trends

The study aims to understand the dynamics of persistent global acute malnutrition (P-GAM) in Samburu and Turkana counties in Kenya. The brief highlights four key insights from the baseline survey, including the limitations of using mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) to detect wasting, high baseline levels of gam in both counties, the inability to draw correlations between gam rates and explanatory variables, and the need for additional rounds of data to understand how drivers and rates of P-GAM may vary among children of adolescent mothers. The brief concludes by outlining priority areas for continued learning, including the implications of MUAC-WHZ for programming and the impact of adolescent caregiver status on nutrition outcomes.