Pregnancy is a unique period in the life cycle for implementing interventions to optimize longer-term maternal and child health. Pregnant women’s frequent contact with the healthcare system, and their strong motivation to optimize their health, makes pregnancy ‘an especially powerful teachable moment’ for many lifestyle factors, including weight management.

There is lack of evidence-based public health tools for monitoring GWG that apply to women of all body mass index (BMI) levels and geographic locations. Moreover, in terms of recommendations, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) guidelines were developed primarily from the findings of observational studies from high-income countries (HIC).

To address this critical gap, the World Health Organization (WHO) will initiate a normative process to:

• Develop global GWG standards that can be used as a tool for dynamic monitoring in antenatal care in diverse settings.
• Define optimal GWG ranges based on these curves, to reduce the risk of adverse maternal and infant outcomes.

This project will be led by the WHO Departments of Nutrition and Food Safety (NFS) and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research (SRH), in partnership with an expert group including researchers from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), the Cornell University (USA), and the University of British Columbia (Canada).

More information on this project can be found here.