Impacts and Synergies of Environmental Health Services and Housing Infrastructure on Child Health

Radin, M. (2021). Impacts and Synergies of Environmental Health Services and Housing Infrastructure on Child Health. IIASA YSSP Report. Laxenburg, Austria: IIASA

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Abstract

Improving child health is central to the international community’s mission to achieve a better future for all. Child malnutrition remains a persistent public health issue around the world. In addition to lack of food and limited dietary diversity, researchers have explored how access to different environmental services and household infrastructure impact child health, measured by height-for-age and weight-for-age. Numerous randomized control trials and observational studies have explored a causal relationship between clean cooking, clean lighting, clean water, proper sanitation, non-mud flooring, or handwashing facilities and child height and weight. These studies have had mix results suggesting the relationship between these different environmental services and housing infrastructure components may be more complex. Recent randomized control studies have tested the impact of joint access to a limited number of these services on child height and found conflicting results across different study sites. However, some researchers have hypothesized that only providing access to a limited subset of the environmental services and housing infrastructure would not result in sufficiently clean environments to improve children’s nutrition. Therefore, in this report we explore the association between access to a larger suite of environmental services and housing infrastructure and child height-for-age and weight-for-age. This study contributes to a growing body of evidence exploring both the individual and joint impacts of access to environmental services and housing infrastructure on health outcomes. We analyze data from household surveys collected in Uganda as part of the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Survey – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) program from seven waves collected between 2009 to 2019. We find that through a set of pooled regressions there are robust statistically significant associations between access to clean cooking, clean lighting, clean water, proper sanitation, non-mud flooring, and handwashing facilities and child height-for-age and weight-for-age. These findings suggest that further research exploring more comprehensive interventions is needed to ensure children live in sufficiently clean environmental to realize improved health outcomes.

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