How Seasonality of Malnutrition Is Measured and Analyzed

Anastasia Marshak, Aishwarya Venkat, Helen Young and Elena N. Naumova
Additional contact information
Anastasia Marshak: Feinstein International Center, Tufts University, Boston, MA 02111, USA
Aishwarya Venkat: Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston, MA 02111, USA
Helen Young: Feinstein International Center, Tufts University, Boston, MA 02111, USA
Elena N. Naumova: Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston, MA 02111, USA

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 4, 1-12

Abstract: Seasonality is a critical source of vulnerability across most human activities and natural processes, including the underlying and immediate drivers of acute malnutrition. However, while there is general agreement that acute malnutrition is highly variable within and across years, the evidence base is limited, resulting in an overreliance on assumptions of seasonal peaks. We review the design and analysis of 24 studies exploring the seasonality of nutrition outcomes in Africa’s drylands, providing a summary of approaches and their advantages and disadvantages. Over half of the studies rely on two to four time points within the year and/or the inclusion of time as a categorical variable in the analysis. While such approaches simplify interpretation, they do not correspond to the climatic variability characteristic of drylands or the relationship between climatic variability and human activities. To better ground our understanding of the seasonality of acute malnutrition in a robust evidence base, we offer recommendations for study design and analysis, including drawing on participatory methods to identify community perceptions of seasonality, use of longitudinal data and panel analysis with approaches borrowed from the field of infectious diseases, and linking oscillations in nutrition data with climatic data.

Keywords: acute malnutrition; seasonality; methodology; Africa; dryland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1828/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1828/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:4:p:1828-:d:498811

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().