Determinants of stunting in children under five years in dibate district of Ethiopia: A case-control study

Background: Chronic malnutrition is the consequence of long-term nutritional deficiency resulting in non-communicable disease and reduced productivity in later life. This situation primarily manifests through physical stunting, a term used to individuals short for their age in comparison to reference population of same age. Criteria for cases and controls: Case: is defind based on the world health organization (WHO) 2006 reference population. Children whose height for age z score for height <= 2 SD while. Controls: is children whose z score for height > -2 SD to z score for height +2 SD. Objective: to find determinants of stunting among children aged between 6 and 59 months. Methods: A community-based unmatched case-control study was conducted on 566 study participants (188 case and 378 controls) from March to May 2019. Nutritional status was determined using the WHO reference population. A structured questioner was used to collect data through interviews and anthropometric measurement. Data entry was made in Epi-data version 4.6.02, and the analysis was carried out using IBM SPSS version 26 software. Binary logistic and multivariable logistic regression was done. Multicollinearity was checked using the tolerance testand variance inflation factors. Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness of fit test was used to see model fitness. Adjusted odds ratios and 95% CI at P-values <= 0.05 were considered to affirm statistically significant factors. Results: The study participants' response rate was 100% for both cases and controls. The mean age of the children was 28 +/- 11.2 months for the case and 28.6 +/- 6 months for control with the standard deviation. Factors significantly associated with stunting were poor household dietary diversity (AOR = 10.37, 95% CI; 5.39-19.94), middle household dietary diversity (AOR = 3.78, 95% CI; 1.38-10.38), family size >= 5 (AOR = 6.27, 95% CI; 3.37-11.66) and have no consumption of animal food source (AOR = 7.43, 95% CI; 4.3-12.8) Conclusion: This study relived that four variables were significantly associated with stunting. These are low household dietary diversity, medium household dietary diversity, family size, and animal source food. Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are made. provide health information to families regarding the importance of good household dietary diversity, provide health information to families regarding the importance of limiting family size, and provide nutritional counseling about the benefits of animal source food.