Rai, A;
Gurung, S;
Thapa, S;
Saville, NM;
(2019)
Correlates and inequality of underweight and overweight among women of reproductive age: Evidence from the 2016 Nepal Demographic Health Survey.
PLOS ONE
, 14
(5)
, Article e0216644. 10.1371/journal.pone.0216644.
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Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Understanding socio-economic correlates and inequality of underweight and overweight is crucial to develop interventions to prevent adverse health outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analysed Nepal Demographic and Health Survey 2016 data from 6,069 women aged 15-49 years. WHO cut-offs for Body Mass Index categorised as: underweight (<18.5 kg/m2), normal weight (18.5kg/m2 to 24.9kg/m2) and overweight/ obesity (> = 25.0 kg/m2) were used. We used multinomial logistic regression to explore associations of factors with Body Mass Index and concentration indices to estimate socio-economic inequalities. RESULTS: Higher risk of underweight was found in age group 15-19 (RRR 3.08, 95% CI: 2.29-4.15), 20-29 (RRR 1.64, 95% CI: 1.29-2.08) and in lowest (RRR 1.60, 95% CI: 1.03-2.47) and second wealth quintiles (RRR 1.77 (95% CI: 1.18-2.64). Education, occupation, urban/rural residence and food security were not associated with underweight (p>0.05). Lower risk of overweight/obesity was found in age group 15-19 (RRR 0.07, 95% CI: 0.05-0.10), 20-29 (RRR 0.40, 95% CI: 0.32-0.51), in manual occupation (RRR 0.58, 95% CI: 0.46-0.74) and in lower quintiles. Women with primary (RRR 1.91, 95% CI: 1.36-2.67), secondary education (RRR 1.42, 95% CI 1.00, 2.01) were at increased risk of overweight/obesity. Household food security and urban/rural residence were not associated with overweight/obesity (p>0.05). Socioeconomic inequalities were detected, with overweight/obesity strongly concentrated (concentration index: 0.380) amongst the higher quintiles and underweight concentrated (concentration index: -0.052) amongst the poorest. CONCLUSION: Nutrition programmes should target younger and poor women to address undernutrition and higher wealth group women to address overnutrition. Equity based nutrition interventions improving socio-economic status of poor households may benefit undernourished women. Interventions to encourage physical activity as women age and among wealthier women as well as healthy eating for prevention of under- and over-nutrition are needed.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Correlates and inequality of underweight and overweight among women of reproductive age: Evidence from the 2016 Nepal Demographic Health Survey |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0216644 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216644 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright: © 2019 Rai et al. 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. |
| Keywords: | Nutrition, Food, Obesity, Nepal, Socioeconomic aspects of health, Malnutrition, Professions, Age groups |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10074189 |
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