Global and Chinese growth failure disease burden analysis and projections for adolescents and children, 1990–2021

Despite substantial progress, GF remains a critical public health challenge, with pronounced disparities persisting in low-SDI regions. Urgently needed are targeted interventions-particularly for children under 5 in these settings-to address the inequitable burden. These conclusions should be interpreted in light of key limitations: the analysis relies on modeled GBD 2021 estimates that may be biased due to data sparsity and cause-redistribution assumptions in low-SDI contexts; furthermore, incidence/prevalence and intervention coverage were not assessed.