Introduction. Anemia continues to be a major public health problem significant among women of reproductive age (WRA) in developing countries, including Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), where the prevalence of anemia among women remains high. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of anemia and its associated factors among WRA 15–49 years in Lao PDR. Methods. We conducted a cross-sectional study, using the Lao Social Indicator Survey II, 2017 dataset. A total of 12,519 WRA tested for anemia were included in this study, through multistage sampling approaches. Binary logistic regression was used to determine the associated factors of anemia. Results. Of 12,519 women, 4,907 (39.2%) were anemic. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that living in central provinces (aOR: 2.16, 95% CI: 1.96–2.38), rural area (aOR: 1.1, 95% CI: 1.00–1.20), large family size with more than 6 persons (aOR: 1.14, 95% CI: 1.01–1.29), pregnancy (aOR: 1.46, 95% CI: 1.22–1.74), having any adverse pregnancy outcomes (aOR: 1.14, 95% CI: 1.03–1.25), poor drinking water (aOR: 1.24, 95% CI: 1.10–1.39), and poor sanitation facility (aOR: 1.15, 95% CI: 1.03–1.28) were significantly associated with an increased risk of anemia. Conversely, four factors were associated with anemia preventively, including being aged 25–34 years (aOR: 0.81, 95% CI: 0.74–0.90), postsecondary education (aOR: 0.76, 95% CI: 0.60–0.97), Hmong-Mien ethnicity (aOR: 0.48, 95% CI: 0.39–0.59), and watching television almost daily (aOR: 0.84, 95% CI: 0.75–0.95). Conclusion. Anemia continues to be a major public health challenge in Lao PDR. Interventions should be considered on geographic variations, improving safe water and sanitation facility, promoting of iron supplements during pregnancy, and health education through mass media for women in rural areas.

Anemia is a major public health concern among children aged <5 years in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Thus far, no study has determined the factors associated with anemia among children aged <5 years in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic using a nationwide representative sample. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of anemia and its associated factors with multilevel variations among children aged 6–59 months. This quantitative, cross-sectional study used a nationally representative sample from the Lao Social Indicator Survey II, 2017. Children aged 6–59 months tested for anemia were included in this study through multistage sampling approaches. Anemia was defined as a hemoglobin level of <11.0 g/dL. Multilevel binary logistic regression analyses were used to determine the adjusted effect of the factors associated with anemia. Among the 5,087 children included, the overall prevalence of anemia was 43.0%. Three factors were associated with higher odds of developing anemia—male sex (adjusted odds ratio, 1.16; 95% confidence interval, 1.01–1.34), underweight (adjusted odds ratio, 1.30; 95% confidence interval, 1.09–1.55), and residence in central provinces (adjusted odds ratio, 1.59; 95% confidence interval, 1.30–1.95) and southern provinces (adjusted odds ratio, 1.42; 95% confidence interval, 1.11–1.81). However, the other three factors—age, educational level of the household head, and Hmong-Mien ethnicity—were inversely associated with anemia. To resolve the problem regarding the severity of the anemia among children aged <5 years in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Our findings highlight the need for designing an effective approach to address each factor associated with childhood anemia. Interventions should focus on the prevention of childhood anemia, which is considered a major priority of public health intervention in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.

Introduction: Exposure assessment of intermediate frequency (IF) electromagnetic fields (EMFs) is difficult and epidemiological studies are limited. In the present study, we aimed to estimate the exposure of pregnant women to IF-EMFs generated by induction cookers in the household using a questionnaire and discussed its applicability to epidemiological studies. Method: Two main home-visit surveys were conducted: a Phase 1 survey to develop an estimation model and a Phase 2 survey to validate the model. The estimation model included the following variables: wattage, cookware diameter, and distance from the hob center (center of the stove). Four models were constructed to determine the importance of each variable and the general applicability for epidemiological studies. In addition, estimated exposure values were calculated based on the Phase 2 survey questionnaire responses and compared with the actual measured values using the Spearman rank correlation coefficient. Result: The average value of the magnetic field measured in the Phase 1 survey was 0.23 μT (variance: 0.13) at a horizontal distance of 30 cm at the height of the cooking table. The highest validity model was inputted distance from the hob center to the body surface that is variable (correlation coefficient = 0.54, 95% confidence interval: 0.22–0.75). No clear differences were identified in the correlation coefficients for each model (z-value: 0.09–0.18, p-value: 0.86–0.93). Discussion and Conclusions: No differences were found in the validity of the four models. This could be due to the biased wattage of the validation population, and for versatility it would be preferable to use three variables (distance, wattage, and estimation using the diameter of the cookware) whenever possible. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic measurement of magnetic fields generated by more than 70 induction cookers in a real household environment. This study will contribute to finding dose–response relationships in epidemiological studies of intermediate-frequency exposure without the use of instrumentation. One of the limitations of this study is it estimates instantaneous exposure in place during cooking only.

Social capital is positively associated with self-rated health; however, this association among workers is still unclear. Thus, this study examined the relationship between social capital and self-rated health with special attention to the employment type. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 6160 workers aged 20–64 years from two towns in Mie Prefecture in January–March 2013. Social capital was assessed using five items in 4816 income-earning workers. The social capital scores were summed and then divided into three groups. The self-rated health responses were dichotomised into ‘poor’ and ‘good’. The association was examined using a stepwise binomial logistic regression stratified by employment type and adjusted for potential confounders. Regular employees with low social capital had a higher significant odds ratio of poor self-rated health than medium (OR 0.58 95% CIs 0.39–0.87) and high (OR 0.39; 95% CIs 0.26–0.59) social capital levels after controlling for all potential confounders. Similar patterns were observed for non-regular employees with medium and high social capital. There was a significant relationship between some indicators of social capital and poor self-rated health among self-employees. These results highlight that social capital acts as an unequal health resource for different types of workers.

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