Scientists now understand the lethal synergism between malnutrition and illness and believe that about half of all child deaths in the world today would not happen if all children were well-nourished. Yet, previous estimates claimed that malnutrition was responsible for only 5 percent of global child mortality rates, a leading Cornell nutritional epidemiologist has reported.
Jean-Pierre Habicht, M.D., the James J. Jamison Professor of Nutritional Epidemiology, made his remarks as the W.O. Atwater Lecturer at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology annual meeting in San Francisco April 19.
He said this lethal synergism is an example of a problem that, in the past, seemed too overwhelming for the development of effective interventions. Yet, by better understanding the biological and social issues behind child malnutrition and mortality, the relationships became better understood. Previously scientists had believed that only severe malnutrition caused mortality, but it is now known that 83 percent of malnutrition-related deaths are due to mild-to-moderate malnutrition rather than severe malnutrition.
His talk, "Nutrition of the Poor: Who Suffers? Who Benefits?" stressed that explanations for seemingly contradictory or confounding findings can be found by developing biologically based conceptual models and using the appropriate statistical methods to test them.
"Nutritionists and other scientists say that developing interventions to alleviate nutritional problems is too difficult because the overall picture is too complicated and that it's hopeless to try to determine what to do at what level for which population," he said. Yet, he stressed, it is urgent that we do a better job of examining the potential biological and social mechanisms at work behind problems and then use that knowledge to develop effective interventions.
One example, he said, was evidence of a threshold for household resources, above which maternal education has a beneficial effect on child nutrition. Interventions that simultaneously improve income and maternal knowledge are synergistic. Similarly, maternal employment, which is facilitated by better education, requires interventions to improve child care by others in order for the improved resource situation to benefit child nutrition.
"Better understanding the biology of responses to interventions and identifying and understanding pertinent social factors can help scientists understand why nutritional interventions are effective in one environment and not in another," Habicht said.
Habicht was invited to give the Atwater lecture because of his "unique contributions toward improving the diet and nutrition of people around the world." He is well known for scientific contributions in nutritional epidemiology and its application to public policy, nutritional surveillance; biological and social models for understanding nutrition interventions; and malnutrition and hunger.
Habicht has a long history of working with the World Health Organization, the National Academy of Science's international nutrition programs and its Food and Nutrition Board; and the National Institutes of Health committees on nutrition and disease. He is an expert in designing, developing and testing interventions and strategies to improve maternal and child nutrition in developing countries and to elucidate the nutritional determinants of health, performance and survival in mothers and children. He also is well known for his work in developing and testing nutritional surveillance systems that can trigger interventions to prevent famines and the deterioration of nutritional status.
The W.O. Atwater Memorial Lecture was established in 1968 as a tribute to Dr. Wilbur Olin Atwater, the "father" of modern human nutrition in this country, because of his research on nutrients, proteins and food composition. He was the U.S. Department of Agriculture's first chief of nutrition investigations and was the foremost U.S. pioneer in nutrition research and education.
The lecture is co-sponsored by the USDA and the American Society for Nutritional Sciences.
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