Optimizing Maternal and Child Nutritional Outcomes in Post-Emergency and Vulnerable Communities Through Peer-Led Education and Community-Based Interventions

Maternal and child nutrition is a critical component of recovery in communities affected by conflict, displacement, climate-related shocks, economic instability, and other emergencies. These conditions can disrupt food systems, health services, breastfeeding support, education, and livelihoods, increasing the risks of maternal micronutrient deficiencies, child wasting, stunting, inadequate dietary diversity, and impaired development. Although nutrition-specific interventions, including clinical care, food assistance, and supply-based strategies, remain essential, their effectiveness may be limited by weak health systems, cultural barriers, restricted access, and low trust in external providers. Recent research indicates that nutrition-sensitive interventions such as community-based approaches, including peer counselling, mother-to-mother groups, and community health worker programmes, can improve caregivers’ knowledge and practices related to breastfeeding, complementary feeding, hygiene, and dietary diversity, with measurable benefits extending to maternal micronutrient status and anaemia, child wasting, stunting, and underweight, child micronutrient status, and growth and developmental outcomes such as cognition and maternal dietary adequacy. However, important gaps remain concerning the sustained effectiveness, scalability, cultural adaptation, cost-effectiveness, and equity implications of these interventions in post-emergency and vulnerable settings, gaps that call for research combining qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, and economic evaluation approaches to adequately capture these dynamics. Further investigation is also needed to identify how locally led models can complement formal nutrition and health services while strengthening resilience and social cohesion, including through their relationship with household food security, livelihoods, and social protection.

This Research Topic aims to advance the evidence base on peer-led education and community-based interventions designed to improve maternal and child nutritional outcomes in post-emergency, displaced, refugee, low-resource, and otherwise vulnerable communities. It will examine which intervention models are effective, acceptable, equitable, and sustainable; how they can be adapted to diverse cultural and humanitarian contexts; and how they can be integrated into maternal, newborn, child, and primary healthcare services. Studies may also address the mechanisms through which peer support influences nutrition-related behaviours and outcomes, as well as the roles of gender, empowerment, trust, participation, and community ownership. We particularly welcome research that combines nutritional outcomes with implementation, health-system, social, and contextual perspectives, drawing on qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, and economic evaluation designs.

To gather further insights into community-led maternal and child nutrition interventions implemented during post-emergency recovery and in vulnerable settings, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Design and evaluation of peer-led maternal and infant and young child feeding programmes.
• Community health worker and volunteer-led nutrition interventions.
• Peer support for breastfeeding, complementary feeding, and dietary diversity.
• Maternal nutrition, micronutrient status and anaemia, and nutrition during pregnancy and lactation.
• Child wasting, stunting, underweight, and micronutrient status.
• Child growth and developmental outcomes, including cognition.
• Maternal dietary adequacy.
• Nutrition interventions for displaced, refugee, conflict-affected, and crisis-prone populations.
• Barriers and facilitators to nutrition-related behaviour change.
• Cultural adaptation, acceptability, and community ownership of interventions.
• Integration of nutrition education with maternal, newborn, child, and primary healthcare services.
• Digital, mobile, and hybrid tools for peer education and community engagement.
• Implementation science, programme fidelity, scale-up, and sustainability.
• Cost-effectiveness and resource requirements of community-based approaches, including economic evaluation studies.
• Gender equity, caregiver empowerment, and inclusion of marginalized groups.
• Links between nutrition, psychosocial wellbeing, resilience, and social cohesion.
• Long-term maternal, child growth, developmental, and household nutrition outcomes.
• Policy, governance, and humanitarian coordination relevant to community-based nutrition responses.
• Community-based nutrition interventions in climate-vulnerable and climate-affected communities.
• Nutrition interventions targeting adolescent girls and women of reproductive age.
• Relationships between household food security, livelihoods, social protection, and maternal and child nutrition.