Father's Support and Mother's Behavior in Stunting Prevention Efforts

Stunting is the nutritional quality of infants under five years of age according to age compared to the usual benchmarks according to the World Health Organization's Multicentre Growth Reference Study in 2006. The incidence of stunting in infants under five years of age is a problem that exists in Indonesia and is a major nutritional problem. Data from the results of monitoring the quality of nutrition in the previous three years period has the highest prevalence compared to other nutritional problems such as malnutrition, thinness, and obesity. The purpose of this study was to analyze the correlation of the father's support and mother's behavior in Stunting Prevention Efforts in Tuntung 2 Village, Pancur Batu District, Deli Serdang Regency using a cross-sectional design. This study was done on 135 mothers who have infants aged 6-59 months as respondents. The variables in this study were father's support related to stunting prevention and the dependent variable in this study is the behavior of the mother in preventing stunting. The results showed that there was a significant correlation of the father's support and mothers’ behavior in preventing stunting (p <0.038). To increase efforts of prevent stunting, it is hoped that fathers who have not supported their wives should be more concerned about their toddler's growth and health.

Developing Neck Circumference Growth Reference Charts for Pakistani Children and Adolescents Using the Lambda-Mu-Sigma (LMS) and Quantile Regression Method

Objective: Neck circumference (NC) is currently used as an embryonic marker of obesity and its associated risks. But its use in clinical evaluations and other epidemiological purposes requires sex and age-specific standardized cut-offs which are still scarce for the Pakistani pediatric population. We therefore developed sex and age- specific growth reference charts for NC for Pakistani children and adolescents aged 2-18 years. Design: Cross-sectional multi-ethnic anthropometric survey (MEAS) study. Setting: Multan, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Participants: The dataset of 10,668 healthy Pakistani children and adolescents aged 2 to 18 years collected in MEAS were used. Information related to age, sex and NC were taken as study variables. The lambda-mu-sigma (LMS) and quantile regression (QR) methods were applied to develop growth reference charts for NC. Results: The 5th, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th and 95th smoothed percentile values of NC were presented. The centile values showed that neck size increased with age in both boys and girls. During 8 and 14 years of age, girls were found to have larger NC than boys. A comparison of NC median (50th) percentile values with references from Iranian and Turkish populations reveals substantially lower NC percentiles in Pakistani children and adolescents compared to their peers in the reference population. Conclusion: The comparative results suggest that the uses of NC references of developed countries are inadequate for Pakistani children. A small variability between empirical centiles and centiles obtained by QR procedure recommends that growth charts should be constructed by QR as an alternative method.

HUBUNGAN STUNTING DENGAN KARAKTERISTIK ANAK, ASUPAN GIZI, DAN ANEMIA PADA BATITA DI WILAYAH PUSKESMAS CIBEBER

Stunting adalah suatu keadaan tinggi badan menurut umur (TB/U) seseorang yang tidak sesuai dengan umur dan merupakan indikator dari malnutrisi pada anak usia dini. Seseorang dikatakan stunting bila z-score indeks TB/U atau PB/U-nya kurang dari (-2) standar deviasi berdasarkan World Health Organization-Multicentre Growth Reference Study (WHO-MGRS). Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui hubungan stunting dengan karakteristik anak (usia, jenis kelamin, dan BBLR), asupan zat gizi (asupan zat besi dan protein), dan anemia pada anak batita di wilayah Puskesmas Cibeber. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan metode analitik secara potong lintang. Pengumpulan sampel diambil dengan cara non-probability sampling, yaitu menggunakan metode consecutive sampling pada bulan Januari - Februari 2021 dan diperoleh 32 sampel. Instrumen yang digunakan berupa alat ukur tinggi badan, hemoglobinometer, dan lembar food recall 2 x 24 jam. Hasil uji statistik kai kuadrat didapatkan adanya hubungan yang signifikan antara asupan zat gizi dengan kejadian stunting pada batita, yaitu asupan protein dengan nilai p= 0,012 dan asupan zat besi dengan nilai p=0,028. Tidak terdapat hubungan yang signifikan pada jenis kelamin dengan nilai p= 0,476, BBLR dengan nilai p= 0,365, dan anemia dengan nilai p= 0,288 dengan kejadian stunting pada anak batita. Kesimpulan pada penelitian ini setelah dilakukan uji bivariat adalah faktor asupan zat gizi yang berupa asupan zat besi dan protein memiliki hubungan yang signifikan dengan kejadian stunting pada anak batita. Pemenuhan kebutuhan gizi batita sangat dibutuhkan untuk mencegah stunting sehingga proses perkembangan anak batita dapat berjalan sesuai dengan tahapannya.

Prevalence of Stunting According to WHO Growth Standards and Indonesian Growth Reference Charts: A Descriptive Study from Blega Sub-District

Stunting is one of the remaining health issues in Indonesia and its prevalence was still high in the last decades. There are two types of growth charts that can be used in recording the child's growth: growth standards and growth references. In recent times, the selection of the suitable growth charts has become a subject of discussion in many countries. The objective of this study is to describe the prevalence of stunting according to World Health Organization Child Growth Standards (WHOCGS) and Indonesian National Growth Reference Charts (INGRC) of children under five from the Blega sub-district. The secondary data from 2884 children were collected recapitulation of the 'Bulan Timbang' program in February 2020. Z-score of length/height-for-age was plotted according to WHOCGS and INGRC. The result showed that the prevalence of stunting were lower for the INGRC than WHOCGS (5.83% and 11.17%, with p-value <0.001). There was an advantage and disadvantage when using both two growth charts. Further research is still needed to support the result of this study. Keywords: Stunting, World Health Organization Child Growth Standards, Indonesian National Growth Reference Charts

Chinese Preschool Children Growth Reference Standard and Related Curve: Based on GAMLSS Approach

Background: The current national growth and development standard of preschool children in China was formulated in 2003, which has many deficiencies. It is necessary to construct more scientific percentile curve and growth reference standards in order to evaluate more effectively the growth, development and health status of Chinese children. Methods: Based on the physical and health data of 31 provinces in China measured in 2010 and 2014, the GAMLSS model was used to construct the growth reference standard and correlation curve. Results: We obtained growth reference standards for percentile curve and Z-score curve of height-for-age, sitting height-for-age, Weight-for-age, Chest circumference-for-age of Chinese preschool children. The C50 percentile of all indicators showed an obvious increasing trend with aged 3.0 to 6.5. Such as, the height of boys and girls increased by 21.1cm and 20.3cm respectively, the sitting height boys and girls increased by 10.3cm and 10.1cm respectively, the weight of boys and girls increased by 7.1 kg and 6.3 kg respectively, the Chest circumference of boys and girls increased by 6cm and 5.2 cm respectively. Conclusion: The children's growth and development charts provided in this study provide effective monitoring and personalized evaluation tools for the growth and development assessment of preschool children, as well as for the reduction of malnutrition, prevention and control of childhood obesity. It is recommended to be used in some areas such as child health, medical treatment and public health.

Application of the WHO (2007) Growth Reference in Assessing the Anthropometric Status of Nigerian Adolescents; a Systematic Review and Meta Analysis

Objectives The study was designed to assess the application of WHO 2007 growth reference by local studies published from 2008 to 2020 in data generation of Nigerian adolescents’ anthropometric status. Methods Meta-analysis of literatures on anthropometric status of adolescents in Nigeria by articles published from 2009–2020 was conducted. A bibliographic survey was carried out in several databases –Google Scholar, PubMed and African Journal Online. Review of abstracts and full texts followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The methodology for anthropometric assessment of these eligible studies were compared to WHO 2007 growth reference. Data was analysed using IBM SPSS version 25. Results A total of 24 articles which captured 12,482 adolescents met the inclusion criteria. More than one fifth (20.8%) of the studies adopted the WHO 2007 growth references in their data generation. A weak positive correlation was observed between year of publication and application of WHO 2007 reference in data generation (r = .0.28; p = 0.04). Conclusions The low application of an age long guideline by local researchers is of concern. Hence, the need to ensure quick adoption of standard indicators/guidelines in local studies will not only promote the generation of pooled evidence to reveal cross-cutting gaps but also ensure that the public health situation is not under/over estimated. Funding Sources This research work received no funding.