Ready-to-use food-allocation policy to reduce the effects of childhood undernutrition in developing countries.

ABSTRACT: Several aid groups have proposed strategies for allocating ready-to-use (therapeutic and supplementary) foods to children in developing countries. Analysis is needed to investigate whether there are better alternatives. We use a longitudinal dataset of 5,657 children from Bwamanda to construct a bivariate time-series model that tracks each child's height-for-age z score (HAZ) and weight-for-height z score (WHZ) throughout the first 5 y of life. Our optimization model chooses which individual children should receive ready-to-use therapeutic or supplementary food based on a child's sex, age, HAZ, and WHZ, to minimize the mean number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) per child during 6-60 mo of age [which includes childhood mortality calculated from a logistic regression and the lifel

SUBMITTER: Yang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3606988 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature