The eighth meeting of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group of Experts (STAGE) for maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition (MNCAHN) was held in Geneva on 14–16 November 2023. Most of the STAGE members attended in person while five attended the meeting online. They were joined by WHO staff at headquarters and online from regional offices, and 50 observers from partner organizations. The meeting agenda included three new topics (maternal well-being, birth defects and complementary feeding) and detailed updates on various topics from the previous meetings (maternal newborn stillbirth transition framework, maternal and newborn health (MNH) commodities, midwifery models of care, caregiver practices as part of child and adolescent health well-being, and kangaroo mother care (KMC)). The preparatory work included meetings either with existing working groups of STAGE or with small subgroups with the co-chairs of the two workstreams and select STAGE members. These groups provided inputs to the WHO technical teams for the preparation of background information and for the presentations to STAGE. The open sessions on each day enabled inputs from STAGE members, WHO regional offices and observers from various organizations, while the closed sessions with STAGE members helped consolidate the STAGE recommendations. These were further finetuned through online consultations with the members and the final STAGE recommendations are provided in this report.

The STAGE meeting report provides a summary of the deliberations at the STAGE meeting and includes the STAGE recommendations to WHO.

WHO and UNICEF jointly developed this global strategy to focus world attention on the impact that feeding practices have on the nutritional status, growth and development, health, and thus the very survival of infants and young children. The strategy is the result of a comprehensive two-year participatory process. It is based on the evidence of nutrition's significance in the early months and years of life, and of the crucial role that appropriate feeding practices play in achieving optimal health outcomes. The strategy is intended as a guide for action; it identifies interventions with a proven positive impact; it emphasizes providing mothers and families the support they need to carry out their crucial roles, and it explicitly defines the obligations and responsibilities in this regards of governments, international organizations, and other concerned parties.

This guideline provides updated global, evidence-informed recommendations on the intake of free sugars to reduce the risk of NCDs in adults and children, with a particular focus on the prevention and control of unhealthy weight gain and dental caries. The recommendations in this guideline can be used by policy-makers and programme managers to assess current intake levels of free sugars in their countries relative to a benchmark. They can also be used to develop measures to decrease intake of free sugars, where necessary, through a range of public health interventions. Examples of such interventions and measures that are already being implemented by countries include food and nutrition labelling, consumer education, regulation of marketing of food and non-alcoholic beverages that are high in free sugars, and fiscal policies targeting foods and beverages that are high in free sugars. This guideline should be used in conjunction with other nutrient guidelines and dietary goals, in particular those related to fats and fatty acids (including saturated fatty acids and trans-fatty acids), to guide development of effective public health nutrition policies and programmes to promote a healthy diet.