Creating nutritional awareness and motivating rural mothers for consuming micronutrient rich foods like green leafy vegetables and seasonal fruits that are easily available in rural areas, will be a much affordable solution for combating the problem of low birth weight rather than waiting for improvement in the existing nationwide programs for pregnant women.

Background Violence against women has been one of the most prominent issue and a major public health concern. It is a principle violation of basic human rights and has both physical and mental effect on the victim. This study focuses on married and unmarried girls aged 15 to 19 years, belonging to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India. This study attempts to examine depression level among married and unmarried girls who have faced violence against them. With the unprecedented growth in social networking, online digital platform and its accessibility, the study also brings out the pertinent aspect of internet based violence and its psychological outcome on adolescent girls. Hence, the study can be seen as an important and needed value addition to the existing pool of knowledge on the subject. Methods The study uses Understanding the lives of adolescents and young adults (UDAYA) project data for Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Depressive symptoms among adolescent girl is the outcome variable of the study. Descriptive statistic and bivariate analysis has been used to get to preliminary results. Chi-squared test is used to test the significant of variables. Further, multi-variate analysis (logistic regression) was used. Results Almost 29, 23 and 26 percent of married adolescent girls had faced emotional, physical and sexual violence respectively. It was found that about five per cent of unmarried and eight per cent of married girls had high depressive symptoms. It was found that unmarried adolescent girls who had witnessed their father beating mother were 71 percent more likely to suffer from higher depressive symptoms [OR: 1.71, 1.09–2.69]. Adolescents who faced perpetrated bullying had 90 per cent [OR: 1.90, 1.32–2.72] and 86 per cent [OR: 1.86, 0.98–3.52] higher likelihood to suffer from higher depressive symptoms. Conclusion The study goes beyond intimate partner violence and includes various covariates to explain the association between violence and depressive symptoms among married and unmarried adolescents. Hence, more inclusive policies are needed to address the issue of violence against women as the spectrum of the violence is expanding with time.

No abstract

BackgroundRoutine medical check-ups not only reduce the health-care costs over time by detecting potentially life-threatening health conditions at an early stage but also reduces the risk of getting sick and thereby increasing the life span and improving overall health. Therefore, this study examined the prevalence and factors associated with medical check-ups among older adults in India.MethodsThe study utilized data from Building a Knowledge Base on Population Aging in India(BKPAI). The routine medical check-up is the outcome variable of this study. Multivariate analysis has been implemented to fulfil the objectives of the study. Concentration index and decomposition analysis were carried out to examine observed socio-economic inequality in the routine medical check-ups.ResultsNearly one-fourth (23.1%) of the older adults were undergoing the routine medical check-up. Older adults with below five years (OR, 1.31; CI: 1.13-1.51), 6 to 10 years (OR, 1.36; CI: 1.16-1.60), and 11+ years of schooling (OR, 2.02; CI: 1.6-2.54) were significantly more likely to go for routine medical check-ups than illiterate older adults. The concentration Index value of 0.19 depicts the pro-rich inequality in health check-ups among older adults. Furthermore, the results from the decomposition analysis revealed that the wealth quintile of the household contributed nearly 57 percent to the observed socio-economic inequality in the prevalence of routine medical check-up. Education and working status of older adults made a substantial contribution to the inequalities in routine medical check-ups and explained 16.9 percent, and 4.2 percent of the total inequality, respectively.ConclusionsFrom a policy perspective, at first, there is a dire need to spread awareness about the usefulness of routine medical check-ups among older adults. Further, this study reflects the association between education and routine medical check-up, and therefore there is a need to promote literacy at the grass-root level; also, it is recommended to promote health literacy among the older adults. A low level of medical check-up among older adults in rural areas could be reduced by offering free health check-ups regularly. Furthermore, the care of the elderly needs to be prioritized while policy formulation.

No abstract