Community Participation and Multidimensional Child Growth: Evidence from the Vietnam Young Lives Study

Rolando Gonzales Martinez; Jonathan Wells; Paul Anand; Gretel Pelto; Muhammad Ali Dhansay; Hinke Haisma

doi:10.1093/cdn/nzac022

Community Participation and Multidimensional Child Growth: Evidence from the Vietnam Young Lives Study

Curr Dev Nutr. 2022 Mar 17;6(4):nzac022. doi: 10.1093/cdn/nzac022. eCollection 2022 Apr.

Authors

Rolando Gonzales Martinez¹, Jonathan Wells², Paul Anand³, Gretel Pelto⁴, Muhammad Ali Dhansay⁵, Hinke Haisma¹

Affiliations

¹ Population Research Centre, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
² Institute of Child Health Great Ormond Street, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
³ Faculty of Art and Social Sciences, Open University, London, United Kingdom.
⁴ Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
⁵ South African Medical Research Council and Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa.

Abstract

Background: Community participation has the potential to improve the effects of interventions and reduce inequalities in child growth. Multidimensional indicators capture such effects and inequalities.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to measure the association between multidimensional child growth and community participation in 2 nutrition-sensitive interventions.

Methods: A Multidimensional Index of Child Growth was calculated with the 5-y-old cohort of the Vietnam Young Lives Survey. Young Lives is a unique dataset that has information on community participation in the design and implementation stages of 2 interventions: a health and a water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) intervention. Community participation during the interventions was recorded retrospectively with interviews at the household level. Ordinary least-squares and quantile regressions were estimated using data on 240 children. A Multidimensional Index of Child Advantage, sex, and location (urban/rural) were included as control covariates.

Results: A positive association (post hoc statistical power = 0.859) was estimated for community participation during the design stage of the WASH intervention, particularly for the most deprived children (P < 0.05). Negative effects were estimated for the health intervention during the design stage (P < 0.05) and no significant effects were found for community participation during the implementation stage of the interventions. Instead of the physical dimension, the significant associations in the design stage were related to the nonphysical dimension of child growth. Inequalities in multidimensional growth were found for children living in rural areas, but not for girls.

Conclusions: The association between community participation and multidimensional child growth is indicative of the importance of community participation during the design phase of interventions, in particular for the nonphysical dimensions of child growth related to social and psychological factors. The benefits of participation were greater for urban children compared with rural children, which deserves further attention.

Keywords: Young Lives Survey; capability approach; community participation; multidimensional child growth; nutrition.