This can be seen in most of the nutrition intervention programmes in Ghana.8 Yet food security alone is not enough to improve children’s nutritional status, and the significance of care practices to Taxol solubility improving children’s nutritional status has been documented repeatedly.6 9–16 Despite the fact that quality of childcare has a demonstrated role in alleviating child undernutrition in resource-constrained settings such as Ghana, there have been only two Ghanaian studies (of which we are aware) that have examined the role of childcare in relation to children’s nutritional status. The pioneering

study of Ruel et al6 in urban Accra used a composite care practices variable (care practice index) to examine the importance of care for healthy child nutrition. The other study, by Nti and Lartey,16 was conducted in one rural area; both studies found a significant association between care practices and children’s nutritional status. However, the setting specificity of these two studies limits the generalisability of their findings. Addressing this limitation, this paper presents an analysis of the relationship between care practices and children’s nutritional status in Ghana, using a national representative sample. The primary objective of this analysis was to examine the influence of CCP on children’s

height-for-age Z-scores (HAZ), controlling for covariates and potentially confounding factors at child, maternal, household and community

levels. The secondary objective was to establish whether care practices were more important to growth in some sociodemographic subgroups of children compared with others. Methods Data sources The Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data collected in 2008 were used for the analysis. These data are in the public domain and available from the MEASURE DHS website.17 The Ghana Statistical Service and the Ghana Health Service collected the data, using the 2000 national population census as a sampling frame. The participants were 1187 children aged 6–36 months (393 urban and 794 rural) AV-951 from whom anthropometry data were obtained. This excluded 224 children in the survey from whom complete and in-range anthropometry data could not be obtained. The weight measurements were undertaken using electronic Seca scales. Height measurements were obtained using a measuring board. Children younger than 24 months were measured lying on the board, while standing height was measured for older children.18 Outcome variable The outcome variable for this analysis was HAZ. CCP measurement The variables used in creating the CCP score were feeding practices variables and use of preventive health service.