Kenyan
JF-Expert Member
- Jun 7, 2012
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A study of British children finds that slight height differences track with deprivation with children in poor neighborhoods standing up to two-thirds of an inch (1.6 centimeters) shorter than those in rich areas.
"The actual difference in height between the most and least deprived groups is small, but does highlight an ongoing inequality in population health which does need to be addressed," said lead author Caroline Hancock, a senior public health intelligence analyst at Public Health England.
"I feel that the data helps to highlight and monitor these issues and supports the work of health practitioners who are working to reduce inequalities across the population," she told Reuters Health by email.
She and her coauthors note in Archives of Disease in Childhood that 80 percent of height differences can be attributed to genetics and the remaining 20 percent to environmental factors like cigarette smoke, poor nutrition, infectious disease and psychological stress.
Hancock, who did the research as part of her master's thesis, said that environmental factors can be targeted and modified to improve children's health.
For the study, the researchers analyzed data from a national surveillance program of annual height and weight measurements of one million primary school children in England aged 4 to 5 and 10 to 11 years old.
They focused on data gathered between 2008 and 2013 on white, South Asian and black children in five different areas, categorizing the neighborhoods by socioeconomic factors, ranging from the least to the most deprived.
Because the five-year trends for children of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent were similar, the researchers combined them into one Asian group for the analysis and similarly combined black kids from African and Caribbean backgrounds into one black ethnic group.
http://citizentv.co.ke/lifestyle/rich-kids-are-taller-than-poor-kids-study-101812/
"The actual difference in height between the most and least deprived groups is small, but does highlight an ongoing inequality in population health which does need to be addressed," said lead author Caroline Hancock, a senior public health intelligence analyst at Public Health England.
"I feel that the data helps to highlight and monitor these issues and supports the work of health practitioners who are working to reduce inequalities across the population," she told Reuters Health by email.
She and her coauthors note in Archives of Disease in Childhood that 80 percent of height differences can be attributed to genetics and the remaining 20 percent to environmental factors like cigarette smoke, poor nutrition, infectious disease and psychological stress.
Hancock, who did the research as part of her master's thesis, said that environmental factors can be targeted and modified to improve children's health.
For the study, the researchers analyzed data from a national surveillance program of annual height and weight measurements of one million primary school children in England aged 4 to 5 and 10 to 11 years old.
They focused on data gathered between 2008 and 2013 on white, South Asian and black children in five different areas, categorizing the neighborhoods by socioeconomic factors, ranging from the least to the most deprived.
Because the five-year trends for children of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent were similar, the researchers combined them into one Asian group for the analysis and similarly combined black kids from African and Caribbean backgrounds into one black ethnic group.
http://citizentv.co.ke/lifestyle/rich-kids-are-taller-than-poor-kids-study-101812/
