TY - JOUR
T1 - Household food access and child malnutrition
T2 - Results from the eight-country MAL-ED study
AU - Psaki, Stephanie
AU - Bhutta, Zulfiqar A.
AU - Ahmed, Tahmeed
AU - Ahmed, Shamsir
AU - Bessong, Pascal
AU - Islam, Munirul
AU - John, Sushil
AU - Kosek, Margaret
AU - Lima, Aldo
AU - Nesamvuni, Cebisa
AU - Shrestha, Prakash
AU - Svensen, Erling
AU - McGrath, Monica
AU - Richard, Stephanie
AU - Seidman, Jessica
AU - Caulfield, Laura
AU - Miller, Mark
AU - Checkley, William
N1 - Funding Information:
The Etiology, Risk Factors and Interactions of Enteric Infections and Malnutrition and the Consequences for Child Health and Development Project (MAL-ED) is carried out as a collaborative project supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. William Checkley was further supported by a Clinician Scientist Award from the Johns Hopkins University and a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award (K99HL096955) from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health.
PY - 2012/12/13
Y1 - 2012/12/13
N2 - Background: Stunting results from decreased food intake, poor diet quality, and a high burden of early childhood infections, and contributes to significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although food insecurity is an important determinant of child nutrition, including stunting, development of universal measures has been challenging due to cumbersome nutritional questionnaires and concerns about lack of comparability across populations. We investigate the relationship between household food access, one component of food security, and indicators of nutritional status in early childhood across eight country sites.Methods: We administered a socioeconomic survey to 800 households in research sites in eight countries, including a recently validated nine-item food access insecurity questionnaire, and obtained anthropometric measurements from children aged 24 to 60 months. We used multivariable regression models to assess the relationship between household food access insecurity and anthropometry in children, and we assessed the invariance of that relationship across country sites.Results: Average age of study children was 41 months. Mean food access insecurity score (range: 0-27) was 5.8, and varied from 2.4 in Nepal to 8.3 in Pakistan. Across sites, the prevalence of stunting (42%) was much higher than the prevalence of wasting (6%). In pooled regression analyses, a 10-point increase in food access insecurity score was associated with a 0.20 SD decrease in height-for-age Z score (95% CI 0.05 to 0.34 SD; p = 0.008). A likelihood ratio test for heterogeneity revealed that this relationship was consistent across countries (p = 0.17).Conclusions: Our study provides evidence of the validity of using a simple household food access insecurity score to investigate the etiology of childhood growth faltering across diverse geographic settings. Such a measure could be used to direct interventions by identifying children at risk of illness and death related to malnutrition.
AB - Background: Stunting results from decreased food intake, poor diet quality, and a high burden of early childhood infections, and contributes to significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although food insecurity is an important determinant of child nutrition, including stunting, development of universal measures has been challenging due to cumbersome nutritional questionnaires and concerns about lack of comparability across populations. We investigate the relationship between household food access, one component of food security, and indicators of nutritional status in early childhood across eight country sites.Methods: We administered a socioeconomic survey to 800 households in research sites in eight countries, including a recently validated nine-item food access insecurity questionnaire, and obtained anthropometric measurements from children aged 24 to 60 months. We used multivariable regression models to assess the relationship between household food access insecurity and anthropometry in children, and we assessed the invariance of that relationship across country sites.Results: Average age of study children was 41 months. Mean food access insecurity score (range: 0-27) was 5.8, and varied from 2.4 in Nepal to 8.3 in Pakistan. Across sites, the prevalence of stunting (42%) was much higher than the prevalence of wasting (6%). In pooled regression analyses, a 10-point increase in food access insecurity score was associated with a 0.20 SD decrease in height-for-age Z score (95% CI 0.05 to 0.34 SD; p = 0.008). A likelihood ratio test for heterogeneity revealed that this relationship was consistent across countries (p = 0.17).Conclusions: Our study provides evidence of the validity of using a simple household food access insecurity score to investigate the etiology of childhood growth faltering across diverse geographic settings. Such a measure could be used to direct interventions by identifying children at risk of illness and death related to malnutrition.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84870876141&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1186/1478-7954-10-24
DO - 10.1186/1478-7954-10-24
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84870876141
SN - 1478-7954
VL - 10
JO - Population Health Metrics
JF - Population Health Metrics
M1 - 24
ER -
