Enhancing young child nutrition and development in developing countries

This supplement is the fourth in a series devoted to accelerating investments to address malnutrition in the 1000-day window of opportunity from a child’s conception to her second birthday. As with its antecedents this supplement represents the work of a growing number of advocates for greater focus on maternal infant and young child nutrition (MIYCN) the application of a lifecycle approach to programming and the breaking down of barriers between expertise and sectors that limit the scale-up of access by vulnerable populations to adequate nutrition and cost-effective programs that meet their needs on a sustained basis. This MIYCN supplement continues to reflect and contribute to this movement by providing the results of leading-edge research to inform technical consensus program design policy and further research. It brings together papers addressing the importance of support for breastfeeding and the need for more focused efforts to improve complementary feeding in order to reverse high levels of malnutrition seen among children from 6 to 24 months of life. Both are equally important yet demand different actions suited to the strengths of a range of stakeholders acting in concert through both public- and market-based channels to improve practices and access among vulnerable populations to good quality services and foods.