Quantifying Contact with the Environment: Behaviors of Young Children in Accra, Ghana.

ABSTRACT: To better understand the risks of exposure for young children to fecal contamination in their environment, we systematically characterized and quantified behaviors of 154 children, 0-5 years old, in four high-density, low-income neighborhoods in Accra, Ghana. A repertoire of six different activities and five different compartments (categories of locations within the household) was developed, and about 500 hours of ordered structured observations of activities and locations of individual children were collected. These records were analyzed using a competing hazards model, estimating (Weibull) hazard rates for each state (activity/compartment combination), dependent on the present state and the preceding state. The estimated rates were used to simulate sequences of behavior and describe days

SUBMITTER: Teunis PFM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4824240 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature