Good nutrition across the lifespan is foundational for healthy aging and sustainable development.

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing across the age spectrum are essential to sustainable development. Nutrition is at the heart of the World Health Organization (WHO) Sustainable Development Goals, particularly for Sustainable Development Goal 2/Subgoal 2, which is to End all forms of malnutrition by 2030. This subgoal addresses people of all ages, including targeted groups like young children and older adults. In recent decades, there have been marked advances in the tools and methods used to screen for risk of malnutrition and to conduct nutritional assessments. There have also been innovations in nutritional interventions and outcome measures related to malnutrition. What has been less common is research on how nutritional interventions can impact healthy aging. Our Perspective article thus takes a life-course approach to consider what is needed to address risk of malnutrition and why, and to examine how good nutrition across the lifespan can contribute to healthy aging. We discuss broad-ranging yet interdependent ways to improve nutritional status worldwide-development of nutritional programs and policies, incorporation of the best nutrition-care tools and methods into practice, provision of professional training for quality nutritional care, and monitoring health and economic benefits of such changes. Taken together, our Perspective aims to (i) identify current challenges to meeting these ideals of nutritional care, and to (ii) discover enabling strategies for the improvement of nutrition care across the lifespan. In harmony with the WHO goal of sustainable development, we underscore roles of nutrition to foster healthy human development and healthy aging worldwide.

Tackling undernutrition in the Asian healthcare setting: a Southeast Asian expert consensus.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Malnutrition is under-recognized and under-treated in Asia due to resource constraints, lack of awareness and knowledge among healthcare professionals and patients, and lack of standardized procedures for malnutrition management. While international guidelines for the management of malnutrition are available, they may not be easily applicable to the patient population and healthcare settings within Southeast Asia. This paper provides consensus recommendations, developed by the Regional Nutrition Working Group, to foster evidence-based nutritional care in Southeast Asia to improve patient outcomes. METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN: The group convened and discussed evidence-based recommendations and clinical experiences in the management of malnutrition in hospitalized and community-dwelling adults, and the relevance of oral nutritional supplements in clinical practice. Supported by a literature search from January 2007-September 2017, consensus statements on key aspects of malnutrition management were developed. RESULTS: Malnutrition management should be considered as an integral part of patient care and managed by a multidisciplinary team. Hospitalized patients and outpatients should be screened for risk of malnutrition with validated tools. Nutrition intervention, including oral, enteral, or parenteral nutrition, should be accessible and individualized to all patients who are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition. Education on nutrition care is imperative for healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers. CONCLUSION: These consensus recommendations provide practical guidance to improve nutrition practice within healthcare in Southeast Asia. With collaborative efforts from the clinical community, professional societies and policy makers, this regional effort may also facilitate change in the nutrition practice at the institutional and national level.