Evaluation of nutritional status and neurodevelopment in children in kindergartens in a neighbourhood of Bogotá, Colombia

Child malnutrition is a serious public health problem affecting children around Colombia. It is mainly assessed through anthropometric measures that allow determining the Nutritional Status, a multifactorial condition that arises as a result of the balance between body energy needs and nutrient intake. Nutritional status is of great importance in early childhood as it influences children's development, from longitudinal growth to brain architecture and neural connections. Associations between nutrition and neurodevelopment have been described, concluding the importance of an adequate nutritional status in order to enhance neural skills and thus have a basis for acquiring motor, cognitive and socioemotional skills.
In Colombia, according to data from the ENSIN 2015, there was a prevalence of 10.8% of children under 5 years of age with chronic malnutrition, while in Bogotá, 13% was reported.
years with chronic malnutrition, while in Bogotá 13% was reported. These data are alarming, and even more so,
when they are understood as information that does not take into account the underreporting of this pathology. Thus, the ENSIN 2015 emphasises the
importance of identifying critical territories in order to strengthen intersectoral and interdisciplinary actions that will have a long-term social and economic impact.
social and economic impact in the long term. Assessing the nutritional status in vulnerable territories affected by social inequities is important to
social inequalities becomes important in order to raise awareness of the need for structural changes and the development of strategies to
development of strategies that allow our children to grow up healthy. This project seeks to establish the
association between nutritional status and neurodevelopment in children under 5 years of age in a vulnerable sector of Bogotá, Colombia.
Bogotá, Colombia.

nutrition, neurodevelopment, children