Blog >> Child health

Please check out the Research page to read Dean and my new paper on child height using the NFHS-4 data.  It was just published in the journal Economic & Political Weekly on August 4th.  We discuss the improvements in child...Read More..

In last few decades, India has seen a declining household per capita average calorie consumption. This throws a puzzle, as over the same time people in India have gotten richer. Dean and Josephine investigate how India’s improving disease environment can...Read More..

Earlier this month, Scroll published this article calling for more support for women to help them successfully breastfeed their babies.   This support includes not only compensation and time off of work, but also assistance in order to get adequate nutrition...Read More..

The hard-working folks at the Demographic and Health Surveys and the International Institute of Population Sciences, Mumbai have the perfect new year gift for researchers in India: the new round of the India's DHS, also called NFHS - 4 (2015-16)....Read More..

You can read the whole review at this link.  Here is a quotation: "Researchers Diane Coffey and Dean Spears have written a book that is important, timely, and easy to read. It argues that caste is the biggest stumbling block...Read More..

This blog post was written by Sapna Gopal and was originally published at India Climate Dialogue: If India reduced its air pollution to comply with the air quality standard of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Indians could live about four...Read More..

We wanted to share some of the media coverage that the book 'Where India Goes' has got so far. An op-ed by Val Curtis in The Indian Express talks about the book in explaining the challenges that SBM faces in...Read More..

Congrats to Dean and Diane for winning the Joseph W. Elder Prize from the American Institute of Indian Studies for their soon-to-be-published book Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development, and the Costs of Caste.  The prize is named after...Read More..

I'm pasting below a list of practical action ideas that Robert Chambers has proposed after the pit emptying demonstration in Warangal. These are activities that governments and organizations can take up alike, to break down taboos around pit emptying related to caste and...Read More..

At the start of the new year, we were excited to see forward momentum on the national maternity entitlements program: the prime minister announced that the program would be made universal and cover all districts beginning January 1st, 2017 (up...Read More..

This paper by Jeffrey and Dean reports a cluster randomized controlled trial of a village sanitation intervention conducted in rural Maharashtra,  designed to identify an effect of village sanitation on average child height. The paper got published on 20th April,...Read More..

Do read Nikhil's article on poor public health services in Uttar Pradesh and the struggle of three newborns against neglect in public health facilities, poverty, and disease. This is the first part of a two-part piece. The second part will...Read More..

  Neonatal mortality is the number of babies, per 1000 live births, that die in the first 28 days of life.  Postneonatal mortality is the number of babies, per 1000 live births, that die between 29 days and a year.  Infant mortality...Read More..

The Global Health Frontiers series on sanitation talks about the effect of poor sanitation on physical and cognitive development of an individual. The film has featured an interview with our MD, Sangita Vyas and Research and Policy Manager, Nikhil Srivastav....Read More..

  Dean's article in Global Nutrition Report's website talks about how measuring open defecation and promoting toilet use in India can help children grow to their full potential. Hence, helping make World Toilet Day a Happy World Toilet Day! Read...Read More..

This week, FiveThirtyEight blog highlighted a newly-released working paper by Dean Spears and I. The paper, now posted as part of the National Bureau of Economic Research's working paper series, studies the infant mortality externalities of poor sanitation. The paper, "Neighborhood Sanitation...Read More..