in Albania - Instituti i Shendetit Publik

INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH CONFERENCE IN TIRANA, ALBANIASocial determinants of poor nutrition outcomesamong children 0-59 months in AlbaniaMariana Bukli 1 , Enver Roshi 2,31UNICEF Tirana Office, Tirana, Albania;2Institute of Public Health, Tirana, Albania;3Faculty of Public Health, University of Medicine, Tirana, Albania.Aim: This paper analyses the associations betweensocioeconomic characteristics and various measuresof malnutrition among children 0-59 months of agein Albania in order to improve the targeting ofinterventions and to monitor and evaluateachievements towards attaining the MDGs.Methods: The anthropometric indicators, heightfor-age,weight-for-height, and weight-for-age, arecombined with variables measuring micronutrientdeficiencies through biomarkers for anaemia status.The analysis uses data from the AlbanianDemographic and Health Survey 2008-2009, basedon cross-sectional data collected from a sample of1,616 children aged 0-59 months. For stunting,anaemia and underweight, binary logistic regressionwas used and for wasting and overweight,multinomial logistic regression was employed tomeasure the relative risk of all confounding factors.Results: Age of the child, age of the mother,educational level of the mother, household wealthindex, region and place of residence were allsignificantly related to anaemia (all p