142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Home Events & Meetings Annual Meeting Schedule & Program

Online Program

Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase

308518
Malaria and anemia prevalence and nutritional status in Tanzania's Mvomero District: Baseline results of a cluster-randomized health experiment

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 : 10:54 AM - 11:06 AM

Marie Lynn Miranda, PhD , School of Natural Resources & Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Vance Fowler, MD MHS , Medicine / Medicine-Infectious Diseases, Duke University School of Medicine
Randall Kramer, PhD , Nicholas School of the Environment and Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC
Adriane Lesser, MS , Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC
Leonard Mboera, BVM, MSc., PhD, DIC , National Institute for Medical Research Tanzania, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
Susan Rumisha, BSc MSc PhD , Directorate of Information Technology and Communication, National Institute for Medical Research Tanzania, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
Joshua Tootoo, MS, GISP , Children's Environmental Health Initiative, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Hannah Vernia
Veneranda Bwana, MD MS , Amani Research Centre, ational Institute for Medical Research Tanzania
Kesheni Senkoro, MS , National Institute for Medical Research Tanzania
Objectives: A critical component of developing and assessing the impact of malaria control strategies involves understanding target population health conditions. We report on baseline health characteristics in the larger context of a cluster-randomized study utilizing a 2x2 factorial design to determine the impacts of vector control and disease management interventions in the Mvomero District of Tanzania.

Methods: Health-related data for a representative sample of members from approximately 40 study households in each of 24 randomly selected villages was collected in April/May 2011. A total of 2884 participants (838 of them under 5 years of age) participated. Assessments included height, weight, arm circumference, splenomegaly, temperature, anemia status, and malaria parasitemia.

Results: Overall, 5.7% of study participants were positive for malaria parasitemia at baseline, a sharp reduction from 34.5% prevalence reported in the district in 2008. The average number of cases was 6.6 per village, but variability across villages was high. The proportion of all study participants with anemia at baseline was 53.0% (21.0% mild, 30.4% moderate, and 1.7% severe, per WHO criteria), with anemia prevalence even more pronounced among children under five years of age. Preliminary results indicate 31.7% of children under five were classified as stunted, 9.2% as underweight, and 2.3% as wasted compared to the WHO growth reference population.

Conclusion: An understanding of community health characteristics is key to the development and assessment of contextual intervention strategies. Future analysis of baseline and follow-up surveys will compare intervention effects and provide new information for use in evidence-based malaria control policymaking.

Learning Areas:

Epidemiology
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Public health or related research

Learning Objectives:
Describe baseline health characteristics of a representative sample of community members in Mvomero district, Tanzania, including malaria, anemia, and nutritional status. Identify how results of baseline health assessments inform the evaluation of a cluster-randomized study utilizing a 2x2 factorial design to determine the impacts of vector control and disease management interventions.

Keyword(s): International Health, Community Health Assessment

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I lead a series of projects seeking to understand the complex social and environmental factors that contribute to health outcomes, and direct our research group’s technical capacity building efforts. My research interests include: the application of administrative datasets into analyses examining environmentally driven health disparities; informal project based approaches to education and training for public health/environmental professionals; and the communication of complex data analyses and explanatory narratives through visualization.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 4144.0: Malaria & vector-borne diseases