Image: The growth monitoring kit used by Burnet in Lao PDR.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated one in seven children is underweight in developing countries with the most underweight children living in Southern Asia.

Childhood malnutrition is an underlying cause of an estimated 45 percent of deaths among children under five. Issues associated with malnutrition include:

• foetal growth restriction
• sub-optimum breastfeeding
• stunting
• wasting
• vitamin A and zinc deficiencies.

Our Public Health Focus

• In 2017, Burnet Institute reviewed a report written by Save The Children, SHORT CHANGED: The Human and Economic Cost of Child Undernutrition in Papua New Guinea. The report found that child undernutrition cost the PNG economy up to $US1.5 billion in a the 2015-16 financial year, representing 8.45 per cent of PNG’s gross domestic product.

• We aimed to improve the health of mothers and children in 12 villages near the LXML mine in Vilabouly district by providing better antenatal and postnatal care, improving the nutrition of young children, and increasing the capacity of district health workers to plan and manage health programs.

• The Institute carried out an evaluation to inform the development of a nutrition policy for the Australian aid program, to guide the strategic approach of the aid program in addressing child undernutrition.

Current Projects

• Accelerating healthy agriculture and nutrition
  The overall objective of this multi-sectoral action is to create supportive conditions for enhanced household nutrition.
• ACORN Nutrition Project - PNG
  A program to identify and address key determinants of child undernutrition in PNG.
• Decision science using Optima
  Research and applications across disease areas to improve allocative efficiency.
• HMHB: The impact of nutrition, malaria and STIs on pregnant women and infants
  Determining the major preventable causes of poor maternal health and low birth weight of babies in PNG.
• Integrated solutions for healthy birth, growth, and development in Lao PDR
  Testing the effectiveness of an integrated package of community-based interventions.
• Promoting WASH-nutrition integration in Cambodia
  A stakeholder consultation to identify barriers to the efforts to improve WASH and nutrition.
• The Mbereko + Men Model: Rural Zimbabwe
  A community-based program to improve MNCH services, care and support in the home.
• WHISPER and SHOUT - mHealth interventions among Kenyan sex workers
  Mobile phone-based health promotions sent to sex workers in Mombasa.

Past Projects

• ANCP/LXML Maternal and Child Health Program
  This project aimed to improve the nutrition and health of women and children in southern Laos.
• Compass: Women's and Children's Health Knowledge Hub
  To increase the effectiveness of aid for women’s and children’s health in Asia and the Pacific
• Office of Development Effectiveness’ evaluation of child nutrition
  This program will assess how Australian aid policy and programming responds to child undernutrition and develop recommendations to improve its response.
• Strategies to reduce malnutrition with allocative efficiency analyses
  Malnutrition is responsible for over three million child deaths each year.
• Understanding the effects of programs to increase men’s engagement in maternal, newborn and child health
  A multi-country study of how women and men in diverse settings experience efforts to increase male engagement in maternal, newborn and child health.