This review of recent literature explores the urban face of food and nutrition security in a more comprehensive, integrated way than most previous efforts. The review is organized around a conceptual framework that identifies food insecurity, inadequate caring behaviors, and poor health as the...

Urban-rural comparisons of childhood undernutrition suggest that urban populations are better-off than rural populations. However, these comparisons could mask the large differentials that exist among socioeconomic groups in urban areas. Data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for 11...

This study uses data from a representative survey of households with preschoolers in Accra, Ghana to (1) examine the importance of care practices for children's height-for-age z-scores (HAZ); and (2) identify subgroups of children for whom good maternal care practices may be particularly...

Life in urban areas presents special challenges for maternal child care practices. Data from a representative survey of households with children less than 3 years of age in Accra were used to test a number of hypothesized constraints to child care, including various maternal (education,...

Although most developing country cities are characterized by pockets of substandard housing and inadequate service provision, it is not known to what degree low incomes and malnutrition are confined to specific neighborhoods. This analysis uses representative household surveys of Abidjan and...

Data collected from a 1997 household survey carried out in Accra, Ghana, are used to look at the crucial role that women play as income earners and in securing access to food in urban areas. The high number of female-headed households and the large percent of working women in the sample provide...

"This paper summarizes findings from a formative research study conducted in Haiti to develop a behavior change communication (BCC) strategy to improve infant and child feeding practices and to reduce childhood malnutrition. It describes the methodology used and the tools developed to facilitate...

"This report describes the methods and results of an operations research undertaken to assess the effectiveness of World Vision (WV)'s food assisted maternal and child health and nutrition (MCHN) program in the Central Plateau region of Haiti. The research had three main objectives: (1) to...

Data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for five Latin American countries (seven data sets) were used to explore the feasibility of creating a composite feeding index and to examine the association between feeding practices and child height-for-age (HAZ). Urban/rural differences were...

Drawing data from four different integrated household surveys in rural areas of Mali, Malawi, and two national surveys in Côte d'Ivoire, this paper tests the validity of proxy measures of household wealth and income that can be readily implemented in health surveys in rural Africa. The...