Impact of the "Leite é Saúde" program in recovering malnourished children in the City of Rio de Janeiro

Revista Brasileira de Epidemiologia

Castro, Inês Rugani Ribeiro de¹  Monteiro, Carlos Augusto² 

[1] Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro;Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo

关键词: Child malnutrition. Nutritional recovery. Supplementary feeding program. Impact evaluation. Rio de Janeiro;    Brazil.;   

DOI  :  10.1590/S1415-790X2002000100007

学科分类：过敏症与临床免疫学

来源: SciELO

【 摘 要 】

OBJECTIVE:To evaluate the impact of the "Leite é Saúde" program (PLS) inrecovering the nutritional status of malnourished children in Rio de Janeiro(Rio) during the 1994/1996 period.
METHOD: The evaluation was based on target children (6-23 months of ageand weight-for-age < 3^rd centile of the NCHS curve (wap<3)at enrollment) followed up at least for one year and for whom at least one informationon weight was available for every quarter of the first year of follow-up (n=748).Impact was measured by a positive variation in weight-for-age NCHS z-scores.Regression to the mean effect was corrected by applying the correlation coefficientsobserved between sequential measures of well-nourished American children toz score at entrance. Age and nutritional status at enrollment, previous andcurrent health status, presence of 24-59 month-old siblings, provision of soyoil as an additional food supplement, and level of complexity of the healthunit were studied as possible intervenient factors.
RESULTS: The mean variation of the weight-for-age z-score after the oneyear follow-up was +0.464 (IC95%=0.41-0.52), with similar gains in the firstand second follow-up semesters (+0.245 and +0.219, respectively; p=0.33).Impact of the program was greater on children with a greater weight deficitat entrance; age at entrance did not significantly influence the response tothe program. None of the remaining intervenient variables studied influencedthe success of the intervention.
CONCLUSION: The findings indicate that PLS was effective in recoveringmalnourished children. The internal validity of the study reinforces this conclusion.The fact that the program evaluated was implemented in the usual conditionsof the city's health units and the fact that the impact was similar in healthunits with different levels of complexity point out the possibility of generalizingthe results to other urban settings similar to Rio. The fact that the PLS implementedin Rio employed a stricter criterion (wap<3) than the original PLS criterion(weight-for-age < 10^th centile of NCHS curve) to select beneficiariesargues against the generalization of the study, at least in terms of the magnitudeof the impact achieved by the program.

【 授权许可】

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