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- Title
Finding synergies among food, health, care and environment as determinants of malnutrition in Pakistan.
- Authors
Ali, Muhammad; Shah, Ashfaq Ahmad
- Abstract
Aim: Pakistan has one of the highest proportions of stunted children in the world, and the prevalence of stunting has been quite persistent over the years. This study aims to identify the factors behind the persistent prevalence of under-5 stunting in Pakistan, focusing on a child's access to food, health, care, and environment and the synergies among them. Subjects and methods: This study uses the country-representative data from the Demographic and Health Survey (2012–2013) for Pakistan. The estimations of the econometric models are carried out using ordinary least squares in STATA software. Results: Systematic synergies are found for the combination of food and environment when the sample is split into B40 (bottom 40%) and T60 (top 60%) wealth categories. For urban households, "food and environment" has a positive and significant coefficient under both definitions, showing the presence of synergies among food and environment sectors, as coefficients of their individual effects are insignificant. Under definition 2, synergies are also found for urban households in "care, environment and health". Under definition 1, the four-way interaction is significant for rural areas and at 3.5 it is significantly higher than the sum of the individual components, i.e., 2.3. Conclusions: We can conclude from the results that simultaneous improvements in multiple sectors are likely to have a much stronger impact on height-for-age than improvements in individual components. Therefore, the interventions aiming at stunting reduction should target multiple sectors instead of isolated interventions targeting one of the components. In particular, the results show that interventions aiming at stunting reduction should simultaneously consider access to adequate food and the environment, even if the primary sector of intervention is related to care or health.
- Subjects
PAKISTAN; HEALTH services accessibility; NURSING models; CONFIDENCE intervals; RURAL conditions; ECOLOGY; SANITATION; SURVEYS; MALNUTRITION; ACCESSIBLE design; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; DATA analysis software; METROPOLITAN areas; UNITED Nations; ODDS ratio; GROWTH disorders
- Publication
Journal of Public Health (09431853), 2022, Vol 30, Issue 1, p211
- ISSN
0943-1853
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10389-020-01288-x