Child Development and Public Health

Malnutrition- There is three forms of malnutrition: Wasting, stunting and protein-calorie malnutrition. Protein-calorie malnutrition occurs when a person doesn't consume enough food to enable them to grow normally. This can cause various illness, severe weight loss and death. Stunting is when you don’t grow normally due to server end chronic malnutrition. Wasting is when a child’s age and stage of development because of malnutrition.

According to UNICEF, 2011 Figure 5.9 stunting in children under 5 occur more frequently than in North America. The worst is in south Asia, stunting in children under 5 occur almost fifty percent of the time. North America is less than 5 percent and the lowest number besides North America is Latin America/ Caribbean which occurs less than fifteen percent of the time.

This topic is meaningful to me because, although I was never malnutrition or deprived of food in any manner. I have one memory as a child that I have never forgotten. I ate breakfast at school every morning because my mother worked before I had to be to school. My father woke us up late one morning and by the time I got to school breakfast was over. I cried half the morning and I didn't feel better until I ate lunch. That one experience taught me to have empathy for children who don’t have enough to eat. One of the reasons children who don’t get enough to eat have trouble in school because they can focus on school work due to the hunger pains amongst other factors.

This will impact my future work because I will make sure every child I educate has something to eat everyday. If a child comes to school hungry I will make sure they have breakfast or some sort of snack to hold them over until lunch time. In addition, if necessary I will make arrangements for the family to become connected with a food program in their community to help continue with healthy nutrition at home.