Food-assisted nutrition and health programs have traditionally targeted children less than 5 years of age who were identified as malnourished through growth monitoring activities. In recent years, there has been a gradual shift to a greater emphasis on children less than 2 years of age. This change came about as a response to the growing empirical evidence that children under two are both more vulnerable and at risk of becoming malnourished, and more responsive to interventions than older children. Research findings clearly show that the earlier and the longer food supplementation is provided before the child reaches 2 years of age, the greater the benefits not only on growth in early life, but also on long-term physical, cognitive and reproductive performance. Thus, investing in the first two years of life provides benefits way beyond childhood and is key to strategies to promote human capital formation.
Although research findings are clear, programs have been hesitant to move into universal targeting of children under two because of the lack of evidence of the effectiveness of the approach in large-scale programs. In order to fill this gap, FANTA has commissioned a study to compare the effectiveness of the “preventive “ approach targeted to children under two, with the traditional approach targeted to children under five when they become malnourished. The 4-year project is being undertaken by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Cornell University, in collaboration with World Vision-Haiti.