Background: Ageing is a physiological process that starts from birth, continues throughout life, and ends with death. Poor nutrition is not a natural concomitant of ageing; older adults are at risk for malnutrition due to physiological, psychological, social, dietary, and environmental risk factors. Objectives: To assess the nutritional status of elderly living in rural India and to study the factors related to nutritional status. Materials and Methods: Community-based cross-sectional study was conducted at Butramatti village, which comes under Primary Health Centre, Vantamuri. Predesigned and pretested questionnaire and nutritional status were assessed using Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) scale, an instrument designed by Nestle Nutrition Institute specifically for elderly people. Results: Out of the total 190 participants, 85 (44.70%) were having BMI less than 19, 28 (14.70%) were having BMI 19 to less than 21, 11 (5.80%) were having BMI 21 to less than 23, and 66 (34.70%) were having BMI 23 or greater. And out of 190 participants, 31 (43.7%) males and 52 (43.3%) females were at risk of malnutrition. Eighteen (25.4%) males and 25 (21%) females were suffering from malnutrition and only 22 (31%) males and 42 (35.3%) females were well nourished. However, the association of gender and nutritional status of elderly was not found to be statistically significant (p = 0.735). Conclusion: The results suggest that MNA is a useful tool in the identification of elderly at risk of malnutrition. Prevalence of elderly individuals who were malnourished and were at risk of malnutrition was high in our study.

Background: Increase in population growth is one of the biggest problems faced from many developing countries including India. Contraception plays an important role to halt population growth but is one of the most deserted part of maternal and child health care. Even after India being the first country to launch the family planning programme still the prevalence of contraceptive use is low which in turn increases the maternal and infant mortality rate. Objectives: 1.To assesses the knowledge score regarding contraceptive methods. 2. To study the association between knowledge and practice of contraception Methods: A community based cross sectional study was conducted among 600 married women aged 15 to 44 years residing in three urban field practice area of Department of Community Medicine, J.N. Medical College, Belagavi. Information was collected using pretested, predesigned questionnaire and knowledge scoring was done. Results: In the present study, the prevalence of contraceptive use was 58.8%, among these 16.0% were condom user,18.9% were using IUCD, 4.3% using rhythm method, 3.3% using OCPs and 16.3% were practicing sterilization method. According to knowledge score, sterilization and Condom methods had the highest scores and injectables least. In general as the knowledge score increased, the practice of contraception also increased. Conclusions: By the results we can conclude that increase in knowledge regarding contraceptives will increase the usage. This can be done by proper counselling for both husband and wife and providing proper information regarding contraceptive by removing their blind beliefs.

Background: Postnatal depression is an important public health issue exhibiting the strongest link to adverse child outcomes and also maternal morbidity. Objectives were to study the prevalence of Postnatal depression among mothers and to identify the factors associated with depressive symptoms among post-natal mothers.Methods: The present cross sectional study was conducted from January 2016 to June 2016 in two rural areas among 300 women attending immunisation clinics in the Primary health centre with postpartum period less than 3 months were included in the study. Edinburgh Postnatal depression scale was used to for identifying mothers at risk of postnatal depression. A score of ≥13 was considered as positive for depressive symptoms.Results: The prevalence of Post-natal depression 41 (13.6%). Factors like age, literacy status, socio economic status, gravidity, sex of newborn, mode of delivery and unplanned pregnancy were significantly associated with the prevalence of postnatal depression.Conclusions: Early screening of the women and counselling of women and their family will reduce the maternal morbidity and adverse child outcomes.

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Background: Gender preference has been one of the barrier in the use of contraceptives since ages, it may be either male or female gender preference. Even though this is known fact but still it is not adequately investigated. Objective: To study the association between gender preference and prevalence of contraceptive use in urban areas. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in three urban areas of Belagavi. Data was collected using predesigned and pretested questionnaire and analysed using SPSS version 21.0.Results: In this study 47.3% of the women had gender preference, among them 31.3%of the women had preference towards male child and 16.0% of the women had preference towards female child. The gender preference of offspring was significantly (p< 0.001) associated with prevalence of contraceptive use. Conclusion: The findings support the contention that there is still a need to intensify Information Education Communication activities and motivate the population to adopt small family norm by practicing contraception and promote the virtue of gender equality among them.