Leaders from 17 countries are working to improve the health and nutritional well–being of adolescent girls and young women.
A 2016 report from the United Nations chronicled the life of a typical 10–year–old girl based on where she lives around the world, and it’s not pretty.

Many of the girls are on the brink of adolescence, but, depending on where they live, can face a future of forced early marriage, early motherhood and lack of opportunities. Motherhood in childhood has devastating consequences for the health and well–being of the mother and future generations, due in large part to something that has received shocking little attention: malnutrition in adolescent women.

It is estimated that some 3.5 million women and children die each year from undernutrition, and more than one–third of the diseases in children worldwide are caused by malnutrition.

“The battle for the health and well–being of adolescent women is being fought on many fronts in the global health world,” says Kent Thornburg, PhD, director of the OHSU Moore Institute for Nutrition & Wellness. “If we help women and children to gain access to nutritious foods and to eat healthier diets, health will be improved for the entire population.”

Thornburg and colleagues at OHSU have been studying maternal nutrition’s role in the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease for decades. Their groundbreaking research has demonstrated that poor nutrition during pregnancy and childhood has devastating generational effects that effectively shape the health of future generations through a process known as epigenetics.

In 2015, leaders from 17 countries across the world gathered at OHSU to call attention to the problem of poor nutrition during adolescence. Together, field program directors and scientists with expertise in nutrition developed the following evidence–based recommendations for programs and interventions for adolescent women, published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences journal.

The recommendations are straightforward and commonsense. How to implement them is much more complex, however, because many of the barriers to adequate nutrition for adolescent girls and young women are cultural and social in nature.

Addressing the concerns articulated in the consensus statement, the authors note, will require that research scientists, health care providers, policy–makers, nutrition program implementers, and community leaders work together to ensure that the latest research can be translated into effective local interventions.

Girls have been the most neglected sector of societies around the world. The authors acknowledge that a number of global and regional movements are working to increase the empowerment of girls. Those movements have at their heart the recognition that societal health and economic development are linked to the health and well–being of girls and young women.