Improved Measures of the Family Environment in Longitudinal Population Studies of Child Health in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Child health is a global health priority with over 6 million preventable child deaths occurring every year in developing countries and more than 200 million children failing to reach their full developmental potential. The Millennium Development Goal to reduce child mortality by two-thirds is far from being met in sub-Saharan Africa. Families are central to the health and development of children. There is increasing evidence that interventions and policies can successfully support families in promoting better health and wellbeing of children. The design and evaluation of these interventions requires high quality, detailed and validated data on families and child health which is currently very limited in sub-Saharan Africa. Our research will identify better ways to measure and characterize complex and dynamic family relationships and processes. The improvements in data about families will assist us and other researchers and service-sector agencies in our efforts to understand and support families in promoting the health of their children in low and middle-income countries. Using a well-established demographic surveillance system in rural South Africa as a model, we will develop and test new instruments and strategies for collecting improved data about families. The research involves researchers at the University of Southampton, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies.