Growth And Development Case Study
Introduction Growth is a dominant biological activity during the first two decades or so of human life, including nine months of prenatal life. It is a basic characteristic of all living organisms. The integrated nature of growth and maturation is largely maintained by constant interaction of genes, nutrients, hormones, and other factors. Healthy growth and development in early years life have a profound effect on health across the life span.(1) The first 1000 days of life are considered as the most crucial as they build the foundation of healthy life. Any insult to growth and development in these days manifest in later life disparities in health (2). The evaluation of growth and development is very helpful in finding out the status of health
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Such factors are important as they are potentially modifiable and their distribution may change across socio-economic groups over time (8). Nutritional status especially in children, has been widely and successfully assessed by anthropometric measures in both developing and developed countries (9). Length/ Height, weight and head circumference are the most commonly used measures not only because they are rapid and inexpensive to obtain but also because they are easy to use (10). Many studies on the growth of individual children suggest that most of those malnourished children at ages 3 to 5 years already presented anthropometric deficits at the end of the first year of life indicating the need to identify growth status prior to its manifestation as malnutrition (11,12) Anthropometric indicators such as weight-for-height (wasting), height-for-age (stunting) and weight-for-age (underweight) are important in evaluating the health and nutritional status of children in low-income countries where malnutrition is still a large public health problem (13).
Based on international literature on the causes of poor growth and how they are interrelated, a conceptual framework that uses the notion of proximate and distal determinants of growth is structured by Wamani et al. According to the framework (Fig. 1), distal determinants such as household socio-economic status may influence child growth directly and/or indirectly through determinants at the intermediate and proximate levels of the hierarchy
Such factors are important as they are potentially modifiable and their distribution may change across socio-economic groups over time (8). Nutritional status especially in children, has been widely and successfully assessed by anthropometric measures in both developing and developed countries (9). Length/ Height, weight and head circumference are the most commonly used measures not only because they are rapid and inexpensive to obtain but also because they are easy to use (10). Many studies on the growth of individual children suggest that most of those malnourished children at ages 3 to 5 years already presented anthropometric deficits at the end of the first year of life indicating the need to identify growth status prior to its manifestation as malnutrition (11,12) Anthropometric indicators such as weight-for-height (wasting), height-for-age (stunting) and weight-for-age (underweight) are important in evaluating the health and nutritional status of children in low-income countries where malnutrition is still a large public health problem (13).
Based on international literature on the causes of poor growth and how they are interrelated, a conceptual framework that uses the notion of proximate and distal determinants of growth is structured by Wamani et al. According to the framework (Fig. 1), distal determinants such as household socio-economic status may influence child growth directly and/or indirectly through determinants at the intermediate and proximate levels of the hierarchy