Effects of participatory learning and action with women’s groups, counselling through home visits and crèches on undernutrition among children under three years in eastern India: a quasi-experimental study

Table 2 Effect of the interventions on wasting, underweight, stunting and a composite index of anthropometric failure

	Area 1: Control	Area 2: PLA and home visits	Area 3: Crèches, PLA and home visits	Effect of PLA and home visits vs. control Adjusted OR (95% CI)^a	p	Effect of crèches, PLA and home visits vs control Adjusted OR (95% CI)^a	p
Wasting
Baseline, N	1214	1190	1315
n (%)	280 (23.1)	327 (27.5)	314 (23.9)
Endline, N	1048	1201	1147
n (%)	282 (26.9)	277 (23.1)	249 (21.7)	0.66 (0.51-0.88)	0.004	0.73 (0.55-0.97)	0.028
Underweight
Baseline, N	1241	1219	1335
n (%)	639 (51.5)	644 (52.8)	740 (55.4)
Endline	1100	1235	1164
n (%)	603 (54.8)	606 (49.1)	537 (46.1)	0.75 (0.59-0.95)	0.018	0.60 (0.47-0.75)	< 0.001
Stunting
Baseline (N)	1182	1171	1265
n (%)	658 (55.7)	594 (50.7)	773 (61.1)
Endline (N)	1045	1213	1148
n (%)	564 (54.0)	653 (53.8)	601 (52.3)	1.23 (0.96-1.57)	0.099	0.73 (0.57-0.93)	0.012
Composite index of anthropometric failure^b
Baseline	1169	1148	1249
n (%)	804 (68.8)	789 (68.7)	920 (73.7)
Endline	993	1169	1126
n (%)	696 (70.1)	812 (69.5)	733 (65.1)	0.98 (0.75-1.28)	0.617	0.61 (0.46-0.79)	< 0.001

^a Differences in wasting, underweight and wasting at endline, adjusted for baseline differences in anthropometry, tribal/caste status (categorical), ownership of MNREGA card (binary), any maternal education (binary), asset quintile (categorical), district (categorical, fixed effect) and clustering (random effect)
^bThe Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure includes six categories of undernutrition: wasting only, wasting and underweight, wasting, stunting and underweight, stunting and underweight, stunting only, underweight only. A child has anthropometric failure if they are either wasted, or underweight or stunted, or any combination of anthropometric failure

ISSN: 1471-2458