Sehgal, Meena, Jatrana, Santosh, Johnson, Louise, and Ghosh, Sujit K. (2024) Assessing Child Health in India: Development and Validation of a Comprehensive Child Health Index. Child Indicators Research, 17. pp. 657-682.

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Abstract

While developing a child health index is of interest, it is particularly important in the Indian context, because of a high burden of poor child health, the disparities in child health between different social, economic, and geographical regions and the absence of such a comprehensive index. This paper focuses on the development and validation of a Child Health Index (CHI) for India. Using publicly available data at the district level and principal component analysis, this index is composed of 16 variables representing six domains namely socio-cultural, child health status, determinants of child health (both risk and protective factors), household environment and health system and policy. Several statistical tests were conducted to provide internal and external validation. The application to predict child mortality confirmed its validation. This study thus provides a new tool for characterising child health and detecting child health inequalities at a district level in India. Consequently, it can be used by policymakers, health service providers and other stakeholders involved in child welfare to monitor and improve child health over time and space.

Item ID:	86055
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1874-8988
Copyright Information:	© The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Date Deposited:	08 Jul 2025 01:23
FoR Codes:	42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4206 Public health > 420601 Community child health @ 50% 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420312 Implementation science and evaluation @ 50%
SEO Codes:	20 HEALTH > 2002 Evaluation of health and support services > 200206 Health system performance (incl. effectiveness of programs) @ 100%
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