Helpdesk Reports
More than half of the world’s 7 billion people now live in urban areas. As the world’s population is becoming increasingly urbanised, new challenges are arising. The rural-urban gap in nutrition has narrowed in recent decades – essentially because the situation has worsened in urban areas. Ensuring adequate nutrition and food security for people living… Read more
We use longitudinal data from children growing up in four developing countries (Peru, India, Vietnam, Ethiopia) to study the relationship between height at the age of 7–8 and a set of psychosocial competencies measured at the age of 11–12 that are known to be correlated with earnings during adulthood: self-efficacy, self-esteem and aspirations. Results show… Read more
This study investigated the effect of preschool experience (two types of preschool: Madrasa and non‐Madrasa) on the cognitive development of children in East Africa. In the three countries studied (Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania/Zanzibar) preschool education is burgeoning and government standards are being set. This quasi experimental evaluation used four subscales (block building, verbal comprehension, early… Read more
Combined psychosocial and nutrition interventions improve the development of infants. However, there is a paucity of studies examining the effectiveness of such interventions in humanitarian settings. This article examines the impact of combining a group-based psychosocial intervention with an existing emergency feeding program for internally displaced mothers in Northern Uganda. The intervention consisted of mother… Read more
Intestinal helminths—including hookworm, roundworm, whipworm, and schistosomiasis—infect more than one-quarter of the world’s population. Studies in which medical treatment is randomized at the individual level potentially doubly underestimate the benefits of treatment, missing externality benefits to the comparison group from reduced disease transmission, and therefore also underestimating benefits for the treatment group. We evaluate a… Read more
Studies of 36 rural elementary schools in Kenya and interviews with 774 adolescents in the schools’ attendance areas found that dropping out was significantly related to individual and family variables, with many stronger effects for girls than boys, and that girls’ remaining in school was discouraged by nonsupportive classroom environments, unequal treatment of boys and… Read more
Background. One hundred and fifty rural South African children, newly enrolled in Grade 2 in 1994, were retraced in 1998 when they were scheduled to have entered Grade 7. Only 39% of the cohort had progressed smoothly to Grade 7; more than a third (36%) had left their original primary school, and 25% had been… Read more
In this Series paper, we review trends since the 2005 Lancet Series on Neonatal Survival to inform acceleration of progress for newborn health post-2015. On the basis of multicountry analyses and multi-stakeholder consultations, we propose national targets for 2035 of no more than 10 stillbirths per 1000 total births, and no more than 10 neonatal… Read more
BACKGROUND: Malaria is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in early childhood, yet its consequences for health and education during the school-age years remain poorly understood. We examined the effect of intermittent preventive treatment (IPT) in reducing anaemia and improving classroom attention and educational achievement in semi-immune schoolchildren in an area of high perennial… Read more
PURPOSE: Uncorrected refractive error remains a leading cause of visual impairment (VI) across the globe with Mozambique being no exception. The establishment of an optometry profession in Mozambique that is integrated into the public health system denotes significant progress with refractive services becoming available to the population. As the foundations of a comprehensive refractive service… Read more
Background: A growing literature has linked early childhood growth to later-life cognition and schooling outcomes in developing countries. Although existing evidence suggests that children’s ability to recover from early growth delays in later childhood is limited, longitudinal studies on the persistence and risk of growth faltering beyond age 5 y remain scarce. Objective: Using longitudinal… Read more