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Nutritional status of children and health services provided by Family Health teams

Abstract

The scope of this article is to analyze if the nutritional status of children is associated with the health services offered by Family Health teams. This involves a cross-sectional study carried out in areas covered by the Family Health Strategy in two cities in the State of Paraíba, with a representative and random sample of 324 children. Linear regression was used to analyze the association of sociodemographic and health services characteristics with z-score height/age, weight/age and body mass/age anthropometric indices. Among the 319 children observed, there was a predominance of beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program and with inadequate use of the Child Health Handbook. The average of the weight/age z-score was lower in children from understaffed health teams (p=0.02), without a nutritionist (p=0.03) and with unqualified professionals in the areas of food and nutrition (p=0.04). There was an average increase of 1.43 standard deviation in height/age in the case of the adequate application of the Child Health Handbook. This study contributes to the knowledge by indicating associations of the nutritional status of the child with structural (human resources) and procedural (adherence to the Child Health Handbook) characteristics of health services.

Key words:
Primary health care; Evaluation of health services; Growth

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