Background
The World Health Organization (WHO) works with Member States and partners to ensure universal access to effective health and nutrition actions and to healthy and sustainable diets. To do this, WHO uses its convening power to help set, align, and advocate for priority actions to improve health and nutrition; develop evidence-informed guidance based on robust scientific and ethical frameworks; support the adoption of guidance and implementation of effective actions; and monitor and evaluate policy and programme implementation and health and nutrition outcomes.
In 2015, Member States committed to eliminating all forms of malnutrition by 2030 as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To achieve this objective, the SDGs incorporated the Global Nutrition Targets approved by the World Health Assembly that aim to reduce the proportion of children suffering from wasting to < 5% by 2025 and to < 3% by 2030. Yet since these targets were adopted, the proportion of children with wasting has remained largely unchanged. In 2019, an estimated 7.3% of all children younger than 5 years (or 50 million children) had wasting. To achieve the SDG targets on wasting and undernutrition, a major policy shift is needed, with increased efforts to prevent all forms of malnutrition.
In December 2019, WHO, in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the World Food Programme (WFP) convened a 3-day technical consultation on the prevention and treatment of wasting in children in Geneva, Switzerland. This consultation brought together international experts in the fields of undernutrition and child health, with the purpose of reviewing the technical framing of wasting, discussing how to identify infants and children at highest risk of morbidity and mortality, identifying key gaps in the guidance on preventing and treating wasting in infants and children, and agreeing on action points towards the Global Nutrition targets. This was followed by the release of the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting (GAP) which provided WHO with the mandate to lead the development of normative guidance and tools to support governments on the prevention and treatment of child wasting in infants and children in all contexts.
To that end, WHO committed to update this normative guidance by the end of 2021. Therefore, the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, in collaboration with the Department of Maternal, Child, Adolescent Health and Ageing, plans to conduct a scoping review of available evidence to identify key issues in the prevention and treatment of wasting in infants and children. The findings of the scoping review will be used by the guideline development group members as background material for the forthcoming scoping meeting.
Purpose of the scoping review
To identify existing evidence, summarize potential areas of uncertainty and controversy, and propose key questions that the guideline on prevention and treatment of wasting in infants and children would need to address. Authors can select to review one (or more) of the following four main topics (the bullet points under each topic highlight the key areas of focus):
1. Prevention of wasting in infants and children
- Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of existing interventions
2. Moderate wasting in children aged 6 months and older
- Epidemiology
- Screening approaches
- Management approaches and recovery
3. Severe wasting and oedema in children aged 6 months and older
- Epidemiology
- Screening approaches
- Management approaches and recovery
4. Growth failure in infants younger than 6 months
- Epidemiology
- Screening approaches
- Management approaches and recovery
Activities
1. Conduct preliminary search of published and grey literature on the main topics, such as existing guidelines (both within and external to WHO), systematic reviews, studies (both published and ongoing) and other relevant documents.
2. Produce a draft report of the review. The report will include the following:
- Findings of the literature search
- Proposed key questions for the guideline
- Analytic framework (where necessary), to illustrate the various components of the key questions, the relationships among these components and the underlying mechanisms and pathways by which interventions or exposures affect the identified outcomes.
How to submit the proposal
Authors, working independently or as a team, can submit their letter of interest by sending an email to WHO at nutrition@who.int no later than 27 September 2020. The subject heading of the email should read as: “Scoping review: guideline on prevention and treatment of wasting”, and the topic(s) of review (out of the four listed above).
The letter of interest should also include a proposal containing the following documents (preferably in a single pdf document):
- A brief curriculum vitae of the author(s), demonstrating their technical expertise, including a list of relevant publications and systematic reviews (CV should be 3 pages maximum).
- Proposed topic(s) for review including an abstract (maximum 500 words) outlining the background and justification for the review and the search strategy.
- An expression of commitment to submit a report of the review no later than 12 November 2020 (details will be discussed with the selected author(s)).
- An expression of commitment to present their findings at the guideline development group scoping meeting to be held virtually end of November 2020.
- Timeline of activities and proposed budget to complete the work.
Selection criteria
The proposals will be assessed in the following areas
- Theoretical background and rationale of proposal
- Methodological adequacy, including a clear search strategy
- Overall quality and completeness of the proposal
- Authors’ expertise in the selected topic (s)
- Authors’ experience in publications and systematic reviews
- Commitment to meet the deadlines specified in this announcement.
Authors of successful proposals will be notified by 30 September 2020.
Financial support for completing this work will be available to the authors based on their proposed budget and following WHO standard procedures.