Nutritional Status Of Community Research Articles

ANALYSIS OF FACTORS AFFECTING THE NUMBER OF STUNTING AND WASTING IN SOUTHEAST SULAWESI USING GEOGRAPHICALLY WEIGHTED BIVARIATE GENERALIZED POISSON REGRESSION

Objective: Low nutritional status of children may lead to nutritional problems, such as stunting or wasting. Therefore, stunting and wasting management are important to avoid the negative effects on toddlers' growth and to prevent future decreased productivity of the individuals. The Geographically Weighted Bivariate Poisson Regression (GWBGPR), is an effort to support stunting and wasting management by determining the influential factors to assist the governments in improving the community's nutritional status. Method: This non-reactive unobtrusive method applied the secondary data from the Health Agency of Southern-East Sulawesi Province. The data were about the stunting and wasting cases. The unit analyses were the sub-districts in the province, 222 districts. Results: The GWBGPR model obtained 12 regional groups for the stunting cases and 17 regional groups for the wasting case with the most influential factors such as the newly born weight, the percentage of 6-month-old babies with exclusive breast milk, the percentage of toddlers with complete primary immunization, the percentage of toddlers with vitamin A, the percentage of toddlers suffering from acute respiratory syndrome, and the percentage of toddlers suffering from diarrhea which often occurs in the southern region of Southeast Sulawesi Province. Coclusions: The coefficients of the influencing factors explain that every additional 1% will increase the average number of stunting and wasting cases according to the coefficient value of each sub-district area assuming other variables are constant in the sub-district area which is significant.

Dietary adequacy and nutritional status of Meitei community of Manipur, Northeast India

Meitei is the main ethnic community that belongs to the north‐eastern state of Manipur in India. This community is bestowed with rich biodiverse resources with indigenous foods still form an integral part of their diet. However, limited data on the food and nutrient consumption as well as nutritional status of this community are available. This study was carried out on the children, adolescents and women of reproductive age (WRA) of this community from 12 villages, to determine their food consumption pattern and nutritional status. Basic anthropometry and 24‐h dietary intake assessment was conducted. The prevalence of underweight was 27%, stunting was 45% and wasting was 12% in children below 5 years. Stunting was observed among 34% of children 5–17 years of age. About 7% of WRA were undernourished, while 28% were overweight or obese. About 55% of 1–7 year‐old children had mean probability adequacy of 12 micronutrients <0.5, and the adequacy of individual micronutrients namely vitamin A, E and calcium were low. Dietary determinants such as low dietary diversity score, dietary species richness and the lowest tertiles of different food groups' intake (except for sugars, fish and sea foods and spices and condiments) predicted micronutrient inadequacy. In addition to a high prevalence of undernutrition in children and adolescents and overnutrition in WRA, the effect of various dietary determinants on micronutrient adequacy in the study group of the Meitei community are reported.

Rural development and shifts in household dietary practices from 1999 to 2010 in the Tapaj\xf3s River region, Brazilian Amazon: empirical evidence from dietary surveys

English abstractBackgroundResearch on changing dietary practices is rare in lower and middle income countries, and understanding the impact of global economic processes on population health and nutrition is important, especially of rural communities. We analyzed the diet of 22 families in Brasília Legal, a riverside community in the Tapajós River region of the Brazilian Amazon, using nonparametric tests to compare dietary surveys taken in 1999 and 2010.ResultsData from the two surveys show that food obtained through commercial supply chains became more frequent in household diets, corresponding to significant increases in daily consumption of food items rich in energy, protein, and sugar. At the same time, there was a decline in traditional Amazonian food intake.ConclusionsComparing these results with household socio-economic characteristics and drawing on open-ended interviews, we consider the multiple influences that economic development processes may have had on local diets. The introduction of new income sources and employment opportunities, infrastructural and transportation expansion, as well as environmental change appear to have influenced the observed dietary shifts. Such shifts are likely to have important implications for the nutritional status of communities in the Amazon, highlighting concerning trade-offs between current development trajectories and human health. Public policies and health education programs must urgently consider the interactions between sustainable development priorities in order to address emerging health risks in this rapidly changing region.

Mother’s Knowledge Regarding Local-Based Complementary Feeding for Supporting Healthy Indonesia Program with Family Method

Undernutrition among children under five years is still the main problem in many developing countries. Healthy Indonesia program has been implemented across Indonesia by the government to improve health status and nutritional status of community through health effort and community empowerment. Growth monitoring of children is one of its indicators. The present study aimed at exploring the mother’s knowledge regarding local-based complementary feeding practice for supporting healthy Indonesia program in selected communities at Banyuasin regency in Indonesia. It was a descriptive study with a qualitative approach. Using a semi-structured questionnaire, data was collected and thematic analysis was applied to analysis the data. Twenty four mothers of children aged 6-24 months were interviewed. Four main themes were identified including: (1) child growth, (2) balanced nutrition, (3) picky eating behavior, and (4) local-based complementary feeding recipes. Although willingness to provide a local-based complementary feeding was good among the mothers, this was not always reflected in its practices. This study provides information essential to enhanced health program management and has policy implications for the improvement of nutrition program for children aged 6-24 months in Banyuasin. It is suggested to encourage mothers to practice a healthy complementary feeding made of local foods to children aged 6–24 months.

National nutrition monitoring bureau in India-An overview

The nutritional surveillance system in our country is in the offing and is still at the stage of infancy. Nevertheless the system of nutritional montoring is fairly well established at least in the States where National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) is in operation. Nutrition monitoring helps to assess nutritonal problems prevalent in the community in terms of their nature magnitude and distribution among the population groups as well as geographical areas. Such monitoring over a period of time. This information is necessary to evolve policies to formulate appropriate programmes and implement the same for the prevention and effective control of nutritional deficiency disorders. It highlights the need to evaluate the ongoing nutrition programmes identification of bottlenecks if any and to initiate corrective steps wherever necessary. Prior to 1972 the State nutrition bureaus were collecting date on nutritional status of communities in their respective States. However most of them weresporadic and were often based on different survey methodologies and inadequate sample size rendering such data non comparable between the States. Therefore in the year 1972 the NNMB units were established in 10 States viz. Andhra Pradesh Karnataka Kerala Tamil Nadu Maharashtra Madhya Pradesh Orissa Uttar Pradesh Gujarat and West Bengal under the aegis of National Institute of Nutrition Indian Council of Medical research. Since its inception these have been collecting information on diet & nutritional status of communities on a regular basis with the main objective to develop a reliable database on nutrition status of communities on a regular basis based on systematic surveys carried out by adopting statistically valid sampling designs and sample sizes and by using standard methodologies uniformly in all the States. (excerpt)

Ecological and geographic characteristics predict nutritional status of communities: rapid assessment for poor villages.

The quality of poverty alleviation programmes relies heavily on appropriate targeting and priority setting. Major problems in assessing poverty include identification of the indicators of poverty and the methods used for its assessment. Nutritional status, expressed by anthropometric indices, has been proposed as a poverty indicator because of its validity, objectivity, reliability and feasibility. This study was conducted to explore the application of remote sensing to poverty mapping based on nutritional status at the community level. Relationships between the nutritional status within a community and the ecological characteristics of the community were investigated. Multiple linear regression tests were executed, and the resultant equations were tested for their validity in predicting communities with poor nutritional status. Among geographical and ecological indicators used, distance to the nearest market, main soil type, rice field area, and perennial cultivation area were found to be most useful predictors for the ranking of the communities by nutritional status. Among non-ecological determinants, food consumption, health service status and living conditions were also found as predictors. The highest correlation was found if total population was also taken into account in the regression model (R2 = 0.69; p < 0.0001). In the assessment of the sensitivity and specificity of the eight models studied, 'undernutrition' was defined as a condition where a community belongs in the first quartile for nutritional status (highest prevalence of undernutrition), and the baseline nutritional survey was considered as a standard method for final diagnosis. Most models which included only ecological factors in the equations had lower sensitivity and specificity than models which included all determinant factors in the equations. All models which took into account the total population had higher sensitivity and specificity than those that did not take total population into account. The best model of those that took into account only the geographical and ecological characteristics of the community's living environment had similar sensitivity and specificity (80% and 94.1%, respectively) as the models that considered non-geographical and non-ecological variables in addition to geographical and ecological variables. In the case of West Sumatra, only four ecological and geographic characteristics were sufficient to predict poverty in village. Since these characteristics could be surveyed by remote sensing, it may well be possible to use remote sensing for a rapid method for poverty mapping.

A computer simulation of household sampling schemes for health surveys in developing countries.

Cluster sample surveys of health and nutrition in rural areas of developing countries frequently utilize the EPI (Expanded Programme on Immunization) method of selecting households where complete enumeration and systematic or simple random sampling (SRS) is considered impractical. The first household is selected by choosing a random direction from the centre of the community, counting the houses along that route, and picking one at random. Subsequent households are chosen by visiting that house which is nearest to the preceding one. Using a computer, and data from a survey of all children in 30 villages in Uganda, we simulated the selection of samples of size 7, 15 and 30 children from each village using SRS, the EPI method, and four different modifications of the EPI method. The choice of sampling scheme for households had very little effect on the precision or bias of estimates of prevalence of malnutrition, or of recent morbidity, with EPI performing as well as SRS. However, the EPI scheme was inefficient and showed bias for variables relating to child care and for socioeconomic variables. Two of the modified EPI schemes (taking every fifth house and taking separate EPI samples in each quarter of the community) performed in general much better than EPI and almost as well as SRS. These results suggest that the unmodified EPI household sampling scheme may be adequate for rapid appraisal of morbidity prevalence or nutritional status of communities, but that it may not be appropriate for surveys which cover a wider range of topics such as health care, or seek to examine the association of health or nutrition with explanatory factors such as education and socioeconomic status. Other factors such as cost and the ability to monitor interviewers' performance should also be taken into account.

The ecology of malnutrition in a rural community in Tanzania

The remote and immediate causes of protein deficiency in a Southwest Tanzanian community were examined. The inadequate nutrition of infants and children was attributable to a variety of factors which included the cultural background of the tribe, the land tenure system, poor agricultural practices, endemic, parasitic and communicable diseases, child rearing practices, and a series of historical events. A vicious circle of malnutrition, ill health, decreased productivity, poverty and more malnutrition has been established. Providing immediate food sufficiency was considered to be inadequate because of the complexity of the situation. A variety of relief measures would be required. These included administrative, legislative and political changes, the use of better agricultural methods, the promotion of health community development, education and the introduction of economic incentives. A systematic examination of the many factors influencing nutritional status of communities is required if remedial measures...