O impacto das condições socioeconômicas e de saúde no estado nutricional de crianças atendidas em creches municipais de Juiz de Fora – MG

Abstract

The health-disease process is originated and spread in the society due to strong processes of social, economic, cultural, environmental and political determinants. Therefore, economic and social conditions influence decisively health conditions of people and populations. Determinants as income, education, employment, leisure and social integration may have such a great influence on the state of health of a population as factors regarded as direct causes of aggravations. The nutritional situation of children is essential for assessing their health and life conditions evolution in relation to the population in general, considering the multifactorial character of children's nutritional status. The extent of meeting the basic needs as eating, sanitation, access to health services, income level and education, among others, is considered one of most influent aspects in the nutritional status of a child. Thus, the knowledge of the socioeconomic conditions of children who attend public daycare centers is essential for evaluating strategies for prevention and controlling of the nutrition disorders that affect children. The present work aimed to evaluate the possible links between socioeconomic variables and the nutritional status of children who attend public daycare centers in the city of Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais. It is a cross sectional study carried out with those children. Socioeconomic and health data were assessed. The softwares IBM SPSS version 20.0 and Minitab 16.0 were used to analyze the data. The final sample was of 264 individuals. The results of the adjustment of the multivariate linear regression model with weight/height as response variable show that 6.2% of weight/height variability is explained by the variables: mother's current working conditions, disease in the last 15 days and birth weight. The results of the adjustment of the mentioned model with height/age as response variable show that 8.4% of height/age variability is explained by the variables: sex, number of earners per household, number of people who depend on the income and birth weight. As to the results of the adjustment of the same model with weight/age as response variable show that 8.3% of weight/age variability is explained by the variables: earners per household, number of gestations and birth weight. And the results of the adjustment of the multivariate linear regression model with Body Mass Index (BMI)/age as response variable show that 4.0% of the Body Mass Index (BMI)/age variability are explained by the variables: mother's current working conditions, birth weight and disease in the last 15 days. The results show that the improvement of mother’s current working conditions influence weight/height and BMI/age relations positively, and the increase in earners per household is positively linked to height/age and weight/age relations. Furthermore, the reduction of the number of people who depend on the income contributes to the increase in height/age relation.