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Social Factors Influencing Child Health in Ghana

OBJECTIVES: Social factors have profound effects on health. Children are especially vulnerable to social influences, particularly in their early years. Adverse social exposures in childhood can lead to chronic disorders later in life. Here, we sought to identify and evaluate the impact of social fac...

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Autores principales: Quansah, Emmanuel, Ohene, Lilian Akorfa, Norman, Linda, Mireku, Michael Osei, Karikari, Thomas K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4706365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26745277
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145401
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author Quansah, Emmanuel
Ohene, Lilian Akorfa
Norman, Linda
Mireku, Michael Osei
Karikari, Thomas K.
author_facet Quansah, Emmanuel
Ohene, Lilian Akorfa
Norman, Linda
Mireku, Michael Osei
Karikari, Thomas K.
author_sort Quansah, Emmanuel
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVES: Social factors have profound effects on health. Children are especially vulnerable to social influences, particularly in their early years. Adverse social exposures in childhood can lead to chronic disorders later in life. Here, we sought to identify and evaluate the impact of social factors on child health in Ghana. As Ghana is unlikely to achieve the Millennium Development Goals’ target of reducing child mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015, we deemed it necessary to identify social determinants that might have contributed to the non-realisation of this goal. METHODS: ScienceDirect, PubMed, MEDLINE via EBSCO and Google Scholar were searched for published articles reporting on the influence of social factors on child health in Ghana. After screening the 98 articles identified, 34 of them that met our inclusion criteria were selected for qualitative review. RESULTS: Major social factors influencing child health in the country include maternal education, rural-urban disparities (place of residence), family income (wealth/poverty) and high dependency (multiparousity). These factors are associated with child mortality, nutritional status of children, completion of immunisation programmes, health-seeking behaviour and hygiene practices. CONCLUSIONS: Several social factors influence child health outcomes in Ghana. Developing more effective responses to these social determinants would require sustainable efforts from all stakeholders including the Government, healthcare providers and families. We recommend the development of interventions that would support families through direct social support initiatives aimed at alleviating poverty and inequality, and indirect approaches targeted at eliminating the dependence of poor health outcomes on social factors. Importantly, the expansion of quality free education interventions to improve would-be-mother’s health knowledge is emphasised.
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spelling pubmed-47063652016-01-15 Social Factors Influencing Child Health in Ghana Quansah, Emmanuel Ohene, Lilian Akorfa Norman, Linda Mireku, Michael Osei Karikari, Thomas K. PLoS One Research Article OBJECTIVES: Social factors have profound effects on health. Children are especially vulnerable to social influences, particularly in their early years. Adverse social exposures in childhood can lead to chronic disorders later in life. Here, we sought to identify and evaluate the impact of social factors on child health in Ghana. As Ghana is unlikely to achieve the Millennium Development Goals’ target of reducing child mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015, we deemed it necessary to identify social determinants that might have contributed to the non-realisation of this goal. METHODS: ScienceDirect, PubMed, MEDLINE via EBSCO and Google Scholar were searched for published articles reporting on the influence of social factors on child health in Ghana. After screening the 98 articles identified, 34 of them that met our inclusion criteria were selected for qualitative review. RESULTS: Major social factors influencing child health in the country include maternal education, rural-urban disparities (place of residence), family income (wealth/poverty) and high dependency (multiparousity). These factors are associated with child mortality, nutritional status of children, completion of immunisation programmes, health-seeking behaviour and hygiene practices. CONCLUSIONS: Several social factors influence child health outcomes in Ghana. Developing more effective responses to these social determinants would require sustainable efforts from all stakeholders including the Government, healthcare providers and families. We recommend the development of interventions that would support families through direct social support initiatives aimed at alleviating poverty and inequality, and indirect approaches targeted at eliminating the dependence of poor health outcomes on social factors. Importantly, the expansion of quality free education interventions to improve would-be-mother’s health knowledge is emphasised. Public Library of Science 2016-01-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4706365/ /pubmed/26745277 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145401 Text en © 2016 Quansah et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Quansah, Emmanuel
Ohene, Lilian Akorfa
Norman, Linda
Mireku, Michael Osei
Karikari, Thomas K.
Social Factors Influencing Child Health in Ghana
title Social Factors Influencing Child Health in Ghana
title_full Social Factors Influencing Child Health in Ghana
title_fullStr Social Factors Influencing Child Health in Ghana
title_full_unstemmed Social Factors Influencing Child Health in Ghana
title_short Social Factors Influencing Child Health in Ghana
title_sort social factors influencing child health in ghana
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4706365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26745277
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145401
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