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Objectives In an effort to provide recommendation for maximizing synergy between maternal, infant, and young children's nutrition and family planning in India, this study makes a comprehensive assessment of the effects of the planning of births in terms of timing, spacing and limiting childbearing on maternal and child health outcomes. Study design This study used the latest National Family Health Survey data of India that is globally known as the Demographic and Health Survey. A robust two-stage systematic random sampling was used for selecting representative samples for measuring demographic and health indicators. Methods Maternal and child health outcomes are measured by body mass index (grouped as normal, underweight, and overweight) and anemia for mothers, and stunting, underweight, anemia, and under-five mortality for the children. Logistic regression and Cox proportional hazard models were applied. Results Women with a higher number of births and among those with first-order births with fewer than 2 years between marriage and first birth, the risk of being underweight and having anemia was significantly higher compared with their counterparts. In addition, the probability of being underweight and risk of stunting, anemia, and mortality was higher among the children from women with a higher number of births and with fewer than 3 years of spacing between births than that of their counterparts. Conclusions The findings from this study support the importance of birth planning in improving maternal, child health, and nutritional outcomes. The proper planning of births could help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal-3 of good health and well-being for all by 2030 in India, where a significant proportion of women still participate in early marriages, early childbearing, and a large number of births with close spacing.

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This paper investigates the effects of household air pollution (HAP) on child stunting in India using a sample of 206, 898 under‐five children from the latest National Family Health Survey (2015‐16). Descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis were used to understand the association of stunting by type of cooking fuel, separate kitchen, and indoor smoking in the household. Using clean cooking fuels (CCFs), having a separate kitchen, and being unexposed to smoking can reduce the prevalence of stunting by 4%, 1%, and 1%, respectively, from the current prevalence of stunting (38%). The probability of childhood stunting among children living in households using unclean cooking fuel (UCF) was significantly higher (OR‐1.16; 95% CI: 1.13‐1.19) than those living in households using CCF. Findings were similar results in the absence of separate kitchen (OR‐1.08; 95% CI: 1.05‐1.10) and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (OR‐1.06; 95% CI: 1.04‐1.08). Households using UCF had a 16% higher likelihood of stunting, while there was a strong gradient of HAP with stunting after controlling socioeconomic and demographic factors. Therefore, the LPG programs, such as the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, may be crucial to reduce HAP and its adverse impact on stunting, and successively to achieve sustainable development goals.

Background Malnutrition was the main cause of death among children below 5 years in every state of India in 2017. Despite several flagship programmes and schemes implemented by the Government of India, the latest edition of the Global Nutrition Report 2018 addressed that India tops in the number of stunted children, which is a matter of concern. Thus, a micro-level study was designed to know the level of nutritional status and to study this by various disaggregate levels, as well as to examine the risk factors of stunting among pre-school children aged 36–59 months in Malda. Method A primary cross-sectional quantitative survey was conducted using structured questionnaires following a multi-stage, stratified simple random sampling procedure in 2018. A sum of 731 mothers with at least one eligible child aged 36–59 months were the study participants. Anthropometric measures of children were collected following the WHO child growth standard. Children were classified as stunted, wasted, and underweight if their HAZ, WHZ, and WAZ scores, respectively, were less than −2SD. The random intercept multilevel logistic regression model has been employed to estimate the effects of possible risk factors on childhood stunting. Results The prevalence of stunting in the study area is 40% among children aged 36–59 months, which is a very high prevalence as per the WHO’s cut-off values (≥40%) for public health significance. Results of the multilevel analysis revealed that preceding birth interval, low birth weight, duration of breastfeeding, mother’s age at birth, mother’s education, and occupation are the associated risk factors of stunting. Among them, low birth weight (OR 2.22, 95% CI: 1.44–3.41) and bidi worker as mothers’ occupation (OR 1.92, 95% CI: 1.18–3.12) are the most influencing factors of stunting. Further, about 14 and 86% variation in stunting lie at community and child/household level, respectively. Conclusion Special attention needs to be placed on the modifiable risk factors of childhood stunting. Policy interventions should direct community health workers to encourage women as well as their male partners to increase birth interval using various family planning practices, provide extra care for low birth weight baby, that can help to reduce childhood stunting.

Highlights Examines the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in India in four separate time steps. Uses geospatial and geostatistical measure to identify viral hotspots and clusters. Analyses COVID-19′s correlates at the district level, eliciting detailed outputs. Gauges epidemiological susceptibility and socioeconomic vulnerability to COVID-19. Provides a framework for denoting districts where lockdown measures can be eased.

Family planning allows couples to anticipate and attain their desired number of children and the timing and spacing of their births. Integration of family planning services in undernutrition elimination programmes is one way to reduce undernutrition in developing countries. In this backdrop, this study assessed the association of women’s nutritional status and family planning, considering the intersectional axes of the timing, spacing and limiting of births as a proxy indicator of family planning. The study used the recent Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from four South Asian countries (namely, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan) which exhibit prevalence of high malnutrition levels, poor family planning, huge adolescent fertility and shorter birth intervals among women. Along with descriptive and bivariate statistics, multinomial logistic regressions ( mlogit) and Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) conversion models were used to estimate the adjusted percentage of nutritional outcomes by selected independent factors. The results reveal that women’s nutritional status has significant relationship with planning of births. Overall, the findings suggest that planning for timing, spacing and limiting of births can promote better nutritional status in women.

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