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Education and micronutrient deficiencies: an ecological study exploring interactions between women’s schooling and children’s micronutrient status

BACKGROUND: Formal education can be a nutrition-sensitive intervention that supports the scale-up and impact of nutrition-specific actions. Maternal education has long been linked to child survival, growth, and development while adult earnings and nutrition are tied to years in school as a child. Ho...

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Autores principales: Harding, Kassandra L., Aguayo, Victor M., Masters, William A., Webb, Patrick
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5894221/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29636013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5312-1
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author Harding, Kassandra L.
Aguayo, Victor M.
Masters, William A.
Webb, Patrick
author_facet Harding, Kassandra L.
Aguayo, Victor M.
Masters, William A.
Webb, Patrick
author_sort Harding, Kassandra L.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Formal education can be a nutrition-sensitive intervention that supports the scale-up and impact of nutrition-specific actions. Maternal education has long been linked to child survival, growth, and development while adult earnings and nutrition are tied to years in school as a child. However, less is known about the relationship between maternal education and the micronutrient status of children, women and the general population. METHODS: Using country-level data and an ecological study design, we explored the global associations between women’s educational attainment and: a) anemia and vitamin A deficiency (VAD) in children aged 6–59 months; b) anemia in non-pregnant women; and c) zinc deficiency, urinary iodine excretion (UIE), and the proportion of infants protected against iodine deficiency in the general population Cross-sectional relationships (2005–2013) were assessed using linear regression models. RESULTS: Percentage of women without schooling was negatively associated with all outcomes. Number of years of schooling among women was positively associated with all outcomes except for UIE and the proportion of infants protected against iodine deficiency. Income level was a significant effect modifier of the effect of years of women’s schooling on child anemia as well as of the proportion of women without formal education on zinc deficiency in the population. The relationship was strongest in low-income countries for child anemia, and was not significant in upper middle-income countries. For zinc deficiency, the relationship was not significant in low or lower middle income countries, which may suggest that a minimum threshold of resources needs to be reached before education can influence zinc status. CONCLUSIONS: While relationships between maternal schooling and micronutrient outcomes vary around the globe, more schooling is generally linked to lower rates of deficiency. These findings draw policy-relevant connections between formal education and anemia and micronutrient status globally. It is necessary to examine the mechanisms through which this relationship may be working at both household and country level. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-018-5312-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-58942212018-04-12 Education and micronutrient deficiencies: an ecological study exploring interactions between women’s schooling and children’s micronutrient status Harding, Kassandra L. Aguayo, Victor M. Masters, William A. Webb, Patrick BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Formal education can be a nutrition-sensitive intervention that supports the scale-up and impact of nutrition-specific actions. Maternal education has long been linked to child survival, growth, and development while adult earnings and nutrition are tied to years in school as a child. However, less is known about the relationship between maternal education and the micronutrient status of children, women and the general population. METHODS: Using country-level data and an ecological study design, we explored the global associations between women’s educational attainment and: a) anemia and vitamin A deficiency (VAD) in children aged 6–59 months; b) anemia in non-pregnant women; and c) zinc deficiency, urinary iodine excretion (UIE), and the proportion of infants protected against iodine deficiency in the general population Cross-sectional relationships (2005–2013) were assessed using linear regression models. RESULTS: Percentage of women without schooling was negatively associated with all outcomes. Number of years of schooling among women was positively associated with all outcomes except for UIE and the proportion of infants protected against iodine deficiency. Income level was a significant effect modifier of the effect of years of women’s schooling on child anemia as well as of the proportion of women without formal education on zinc deficiency in the population. The relationship was strongest in low-income countries for child anemia, and was not significant in upper middle-income countries. For zinc deficiency, the relationship was not significant in low or lower middle income countries, which may suggest that a minimum threshold of resources needs to be reached before education can influence zinc status. CONCLUSIONS: While relationships between maternal schooling and micronutrient outcomes vary around the globe, more schooling is generally linked to lower rates of deficiency. These findings draw policy-relevant connections between formal education and anemia and micronutrient status globally. It is necessary to examine the mechanisms through which this relationship may be working at both household and country level. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-018-5312-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2018-04-10 /pmc/articles/PMC5894221/ /pubmed/29636013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5312-1 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Harding, Kassandra L.
Aguayo, Victor M.
Masters, William A.
Webb, Patrick
Education and micronutrient deficiencies: an ecological study exploring interactions between women’s schooling and children’s micronutrient status
title Education and micronutrient deficiencies: an ecological study exploring interactions between women’s schooling and children’s micronutrient status
title_full Education and micronutrient deficiencies: an ecological study exploring interactions between women’s schooling and children’s micronutrient status
title_fullStr Education and micronutrient deficiencies: an ecological study exploring interactions between women’s schooling and children’s micronutrient status
title_full_unstemmed Education and micronutrient deficiencies: an ecological study exploring interactions between women’s schooling and children’s micronutrient status
title_short Education and micronutrient deficiencies: an ecological study exploring interactions between women’s schooling and children’s micronutrient status
title_sort education and micronutrient deficiencies: an ecological study exploring interactions between women’s schooling and children’s micronutrient status
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5894221/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29636013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5312-1
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