Giving Compass' Take:

· News Deeply discusses the growing acknowledgment of adolescent malnutrition that is long overdue. Policymakers are just beginning to recognize that this issue is setting young people up for failure and complications in the future while also undermining child nutrition efforts and ignoring the future of the world.

· How can this matter be addressed? Why is it important to tackle malnutrition? What role does adolescent malnutrition play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals? 

· Learn about the growing child hunger crisis.

After long having been excluded from major global efforts to improve nutrition, adolescents are finally getting some attention.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015 by the United Nations to guide the global development agenda, specifically target improving the nutrition of adolescent girls. And adolescent nutrition is on the agenda of the World Health Assembly in a big way.

“What’s different now is there’s a much broader focus on adolescents in the SDGs, in the broader economic, social development arena,” said Lynnda Kiess, a senior program adviser on nutrition with the World Food Program. “We’re seeing adolescents as the future. They’re the ones carrying the SDGs and the effects of whether we reach them or not.”

Experts say this new focus is overdue. In addition to undoing the work of efforts like the 1,000 Days campaign, which has made significant progress in improving nutrition in the first thousand days of life, malnutrition undermines the physical and cognitive development happening as young people continue to grow. That has implications for their ability to thrive, but also for their future children, helping to perpetuate a cycle of malnutrition.

But experts caution there is still a long way to go before this new attention translates into results.

Read the full article about adolescent malnutrition by Andrew Green at News Deeply.