This month, Harold Alderman from the World Bank has supplied an important editorial on our hot topic, ‘Poverty and Undernutrition’. He emphasizes the importance of studies on the relationship of income and nutritional health and especially those in which the results can have a direct influence on policy.

Two of the papers identified within the hot topic of the month deal with methodological aspects (Vargas and Penny, Mohsena et al.). The paper by Vargas and Penny⁽Reference Vargas and Penny¹⁾ describes how an adapted version of the USDA Food Insecurity and Hunger Module was used in a study in Peru. The new instrument included questions about food aid and other strategies, an adaptation that may provide direct policy implications. The paper by Mohsena et al.⁽Reference Alves Vieira, Ferraro, Souza, Fernandes and Sawaya²⁾ uses a ‘possession score’ to assess poverty, as commented by Alderman in his editorial.

The paper by Alves-Vieira et al.⁽Reference Alves Vieira, Ferraro, Souza, Fernandes and Sawaya³⁾ describes how helpful a nutrition rehabilitation day-care service can be for nutritional recovery, in this case more helpful the worse the initial nutritional status, seemingly unrelated to socio-economic status.

The editors of this journal are looking forward to receiving more papers in the area of poverty and undernutrition, especially papers that could have a potential impact on policy formulation, and thank Dr Alderman for his contribution to the journal.